Podcast appearances and mentions of Phoenix Project

Check out my conversation with previous guest Lincoln Mitchell as we chat about Lincoln's new book, Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco. Look for Lincoln at the following events for his new book: April 29: He will be in conversation with Bill Issel discussing the book and what it can teach us about San Francisco today. Hosted by the Phoenix Project at the Roar Shack, 34 7th Street, from 6–8 p.m. May 1: He will be in conversation at the University Club with Corey Busch, who served on Moscone's senate staff, was a senior member of Moscone's mayoral campaign staff, press secretary and chief spokesman for Mayor Moscone, and was Moscone's chief speech writer. This event will begin at 6 p.m. May 13: As part of the San Francisco Historical Society's History Live! program, he will be discussing the book at 6:30. The event will be free in-person or online. May 15: He will be in conversation with writer and scholar George Hammond about the book at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco at 5:30 p.m. May 28: The Savoy Tivoli in North Beach will be hosting a book party, which will feature a brief discussion of the book as well as an exhibit of the works of noted San Francisco photographer Dave Glass. For more information about these events, including how to RSVP and buy tickets, go to LincolnMitchell.com. We recorded this episode over Zoom in March 2025.

We turn our attention to what has been dubbed the ‘Oakland Astroturf Network' and the billionaires funding Oakland's more conservative political campaigns and recalls. Joining us to discuss are Pecolia Manigo, Executive Director of Oakland Rising Action; Jeremy Mack, the Executive Director of the Phoenix Project; and Chaney Turner, the Integrated Voter Engagement Director with Oakland Rising Action. —- Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post Oakland's ‘Astroturf Network' w/ Pecolia Manigo, Jeremy Mack & Chaney Turner appeared first on KPFA.

In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month this April, host Janet Michael spoke with Aliyha Gill, a passionate sexual assault victim advocate for the Phoenix Project to explore the crucial efforts of the organization and highlight the importance of consent, support systems for survivors, and educational initiatives. Janet introduced the show by highlighting April as Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, emphasizing the importance of widespread awareness. Aliyha shared her role as a sexual assault victim advocate for the Phoenix Project, an organization extending its services to domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. She delved into the comprehensive support provided by the organization, including legal advocacy, educational supportive counseling, medical accompaniment, and specialized support for children and parents. A significant part of the conversation revolved around the topic of consent. Aliyha provided an in-depth understanding of consent from a sexual assault perspective, emphasizing both verbal and non-verbal communication. She pointed out the importance of having ongoing conversations about consent, even within established relationships, and highlighted the legalities surrounding consent, particularly in marriages. The discussion continued with Janet and Aliyha addressing various support mechanisms available for survivors. They touched on the importance of reporting assaults, even when physical evidence might not be readily available, to prevent further incidents and ensure justice. Confidentiality and safe reporting avenues were also underscored, ensuring survivors understand their rights and the support available without fear of exposure. Aliyha talked about the upcoming Survivor Art Showcase, set for April 27th at the Stone Branch Center for the Arts. This event aims to provide an expressive outlet for survivors through various art forms, from abstract art to spoken word. The showcase will feature submissions from survivors in Warren County and presents an opportunity for the community to witness the resilience and creativity of these individuals. Alongside the art showcase, the organization is preparing for International Denim Day on April 30th, promoting awareness through wearing denim. Aliyha highlighted the origin of this day and its significance in advocating against victim-blaming attitudes. Additionally, various educational materials and support resources will be available at multiple locations, making it accessible for those in need. April also marks Child Abuse Prevention Month. The Phoenix Project is actively participating by displaying blue pinwheels and providing educational resources to the community. A cohesive approach involving public and systemic efforts is essential to prevent child abuse, with schools and workplaces playing significant roles in this mission. The Phoenix Project will host an open house and donor event on April 24th, offering a platform for the community to learn more about their services and meet the dedicated advocates in person. This event aims to foster better support systems and create a safer community for all. Phoenix Project's comprehensive support system and educational initiatives are paving the way for a more aware and empathetic community. Their dedication to providing safe spaces for survivors and raising awareness about consent and prevention makes a significant difference in the fight against sexual violence and domestic abuse. For more information, visit their website, phoenix-project.org, or attend their open house event on April 24th. Their office is located at 222 South Royal Avenue in Front Royal. Click here to follow them on Facebook.

In this episode of "The Psychedelic Couch," Melissa Barker discusses her journey of healing from sexual trauma using psychedelic-assisted therapy. Melissa shares her harrowing yet transformative story, beginning with childhood trauma, compounded by an assault at 17, and subsequent traumatic relationships throughout her 20s and early 30s. Despite these challenges, Melissa embarked on a profound healing journey in her late 20s, engaging in therapies such as EMDR, EFT, breath work, and Kundalini yoga, ultimately being diagnosed with complex PTSD due to the extensive trauma she endured. A significant turning point in her healing journey came with the intentional use of psychedelics. Initially exploring these substances alone, Melissa describes a pivotal MDMA journey in December 2022, facilitated by a trusted guide. This experience allowed her to release deeply held trauma, access repressed parts of herself, and foster a deeper sense of trust and safety. Melissa also recounts the challenges of integrating these profound experiences, emphasising the importance of working with protector parts within the Internal Family Systems (IFS) framework. She highlights the delicate balance between accessing traumatic memories and ensuring these protective aspects of the psyche feel secure and supported. The episode further explores the complexities of navigating the psychedelic space, including the potential risks of working with less ethical practitioners. Melissa's story underscores the necessity of finding trustworthy guides and the transformative potential of psychedelics when used responsibly and with proper support. Overall, this episode offers a compelling narrative of resilience, healing, and the profound impact of psychedelics in trauma therapy, providing valuable insights for listeners interested in the therapeutic potential of these substances. ---------- Dr. Melissa Barker, EdD is an entrepreneur, activist, and emerging voice in the growing psychedelics movement. Dr. Barker is the founder of The Phoenix Project, a community-led mental health tech platform that's now in the process of developing AI-assisted support for trauma survivors who are utilizing psychedelic therapy. Her experiences with ketamine, MDMA/MDA, psilocybin, and LSD (alongside her work helping other survivors) spurred her into a deeper understanding of what healing from sexual trauma, abuse and violence means for women, particularly in today's current climate. Dr. Barker has appeared on The Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave, Sex Love Psychedelics, and many others. She recently co-anchored the panel “MDMA Saved My Life: Psychedelics & Healing from Sexual Trauma” at SXSW 2024 alongside Sutton King, Dr. Sunny Strasburg, and Dr. Cat Meyer. Follow Melissa:   @drmelissabarker  and at   www.iamphoenixproject.com Follow The Psychedelic Couch: @thepsychedelicouch 

In this week's episode of the podcast, Adam, Ben and Tim discuss various books that have significantly influenced their careers and coding philosophies. The conversation ranges from classics like 'Clean Code' and 'The Phoenix Project' to unexpected titles such as 'Fight Club' and 'The Four Agreements'.The discussion underscores the value of continuous learning and how different types of books can offer unique perspectives and practical wisdom.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

Justin Huhn, Founder and Publisher of the Uranium Insider, joins me for yet another very comprehensive macro update on the supply and demand fundamentals for uranium and the nuclear fuel sector, how the longer-term contracting cycle is setting up with utility companies, and what he is watching and how he is positioning in the uranium equities in this most recent corrective move lower in the sector.  This is a longer-format discussion building upon our prior conversation in August, because even more key news and developments have been announced in the nuclear and uranium sector. Justin recaps the transformative year in 2024, looks ahead to 2025 and beyond, and guides us through with pro tips on how to approach investing in this sector   We start off reviewing the flurry of news this year out of Kazakhstan, from the largest uranium swing producer in the sector Kazatomprom and what it means for the global supply deficit.  In addition to a shortfall of sulphuric acid, and increased taxes on production, with both expected to crimp output, there were even more surprises when Kazatomprom announced a big decrease in their JV production for Canada with Cameco, yet still found a way to get China all their contracted ounces.  We covered again the continued unstable politics in Niger making future supply still in question for French producer Orano, and also touched on the slower than anticipated restart of the Langer Heinrich Mine operated in Namibia by Paladin Energy (ASX: PDN) (OTCQX: PALAF).   We then delve into all the increasing uranium demand from more countries committing to expand nuclear power buildouts, along with life-extensions on existing reactors, and the role that small modular reactors could have in powering AI data centers and manufacturing or in phasing out coal plants as another demand driver.  Justin touches upon the ongoing bottlenecks with regards to sourcing enriched uranium fuel and enrichment & processing due to the recent sanctions placed on Russian supplies, the Russian ban on exports of uranium to the US, and the Canadian sanctions on uranium sent to the US, making it difficult to know where the utility companies are going to be able to source conflict free uranium on the global stage.    Turning to the actual Canadian production supply, Justin outlines the anticipated production output from both Cameco (CCO.V) (CCJ), and the ancillary production supply from the French state producer Orano from its Athabasca Basin JVs. Neither of these companies are expected to grow output substantially over the next year or two, but Cameco could ramp up production over the next few years from it's 2 Canadian mines.  All of this points to a much more constrained output from global uranium producers, even in face of growing demand.   One bright spot we returned to again, was encouragin development and ramping up of production from US producers like Energy Fuels (EFR.TO) (UUUU), enCore Energy (EU.V) (EU), Uranium Energy Corp (UEC), Peninsula Energy (PEN.AX) (PENMF), and Ur-Energy (URE.TO) (URG).  Justin provides his thoughts on investing in US-based uranium companies, and mentions he is watching IsoEnergy Ltd (TSX: ISO) (OTCQX: ISENF), to see if they get their US project they acquired from Anfield Energy into production in the year to come as another new potential source of domestic uranium supply.   Next we get into the key larger uranium development projects in the works and just how many years from actual production all of them are; with no new projects expected to come online until 2028 at the earliest, but likely even longer to 2029 and beyond. We reviewed the Arrow Project from NexGen Energy (TSX: NXE) (NYSE: NXE), who just announced longer-term off-take contracts with $79 floors and $150 ceilings, signaling to the market where they believe the future price range for U308 will be in the years to come.  We also discussed the PLS (Patterson Lake) Project, held by Fission Uranium (TSX: FCU) (OTCQX: FCUUF), that is currently being acquired by Paladin Energy (ASX: PDN) (OTCQX: PALAF), and the Phoenix Project held by Denison Mines (TSX: DML) (NYSE: DNN).   While these are all very robust projects, they will not be adding to global production for at least several years, which raises the question of where all the new uranium supply will come from in the interim?   We wrap up by getting Justin's thoughts on the uranium exploration stocks operating in the Athabasca Basin and Thelon Basin of Canada, and where the biggest opportunities and concerns are from his vantage point. With so many uranium discoveries having already been made, the question is posed if any new discoveries will ultimately matter to the medium-term supply fundamentals? Justin points to the potential of using the Sabre technology from Orano to extract high-grade resources in the Athabasca Basin, and that this new technology could bring more projects up into the development batting order.  Ultimately though, more of the longer-term commitments from nations to triple their nuclear capacity by 2050 and all the tech company plans to get small modular reactors into production by 2030 need to play out before there is more of a crunch on uranium exploration to find more deposits.  Justin mentions that if we can see a sustained uranium price above $100 for a period of time, that it could incentivize larger companies to finally come in start developing many of the uranium deposits that were delineated and are well known for well into the future.   Click here to visit the Uranium Insider website.

IT'S CHRIIIIIISTMAAAASSSSSSS!!!!!The last couple of years we have seen an increasing cadence of tech innovation, but scaled adoption held back by economic headwinds and incomplete technology suites - at the end of the year, it seems like a good time to reflect and cast forward a bit… In this weeks festive episode of the show, Dave, Esmee and Rob along with friend of the show, Gene Kim, author of the Phoenix Project and Wiring the Winning Organization, have a relaxed mull over the trends in AI and Cloud for 2025, what they are excited about for the coming year, sunny Christmastime and cooking the perfect turkey.Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a very Happy and Healthy New Year to all our guests and listeners! Thank you for sharing your time with us this year—we look forward to seeing you at the end of January! TLDR 00:53 Cruising and why don't people use meat probes? 11:00 Cloud conversation with Gene Kim 1:15:08 Excited about 2025! Guest Gene Kim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realgenekim/ Hosts Dave Chapmanger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/ Esmee van de Glühwein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmeevandegiessen/ Rob Snowmanahan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kernahan/Production Dr Mike van der Baubles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-vd-burg/ Dave Chapmanger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmandr/ SoundBeneath-the-Mistletoe Corbett : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-corbett-3b6a11135/Louis Jinglebells Corbett" : https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-corbett-087250264/'Cloud Realities' is an original podcast from Capgemini

Episode Notes This latest episode of the JUXTCast features Gene Kim, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, celebrated researcher, and multiple award-winning Chief Technology Officer. Gene is widely recognized for his contributions to the DevOps movement and for co-authoring influential works such as The Phoenix Project and The DevOps Handbook. In this engaging discussion, Gene reflects on his career journey, from his time as the founder and CTO of Tripwire to his rediscovery of the joy of programming through Clojure. The episode explores key themes including high-performing technology organizations, the transformative role of AI in programming, and the strategic importance of modularity in systems design. The conversation also offers unique insights into the evolving role of AI in augmenting developer productivity and creativity. Gene shares his hands-on experience with pair programming and discusses the intersection of REPL-based programming, economic principles in software design, and the future of junior developers in an AI-enhanced ecosystem. Thoughts on a “DORA for GenAI and developers” study: https://x.com/RealGeneKim/status/1856146004724330862  2 hour pair programming with Steve Yegge! https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim/status/1860507119096869363 Description of what I did while walking dog: https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim/status/1853860996689064211  “From Naptime to Big Sleep: Using Large Language Models To Catch Vulnerabilities In Real-World Code,” https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/10/from-naptime-to-big-sleep.html?m=1 XTDB: https://docs.xtdb.com/quickstart/sql-overview.html

"Plus il y a de gens, plus Git est efficace" Le D.E.V. de la semaine est Olivier Jacques, consultant ProServe chez Amazon Web Services. Dans cet épisode, nous explorons l'évolution de Git en 2024, alors que nous allons bientôt fêter ses 20 ans. Nous discutons de l'importance de Git dans la gestion du code et examinons plusieurs stratégies d'utilisation au sein des équipes de développement. Olivier présente une typologie de cinq méthodes, comme la stratégie trunk-based, qui favorise l'intégration continue, et aborde les défis liés à chacune d'elles, ainsi que GitFlow, et les branches par environnement (à éviter !). Il met en lumière l'importance du contexte d'équipe et de la culture organisationnelle dans le choix de la stratégie la plus adaptée, tout en soulignant que l'efficacité d'une méthode dépend également de sa mise en &oeliguvre au sein de l'équipe. Liens évoqués pendant l'émission Atlassian : Git workflows.IT Revolution : Accelerate, The Unicorn Project, The Phoenix Project, Team TopologiesGregor Hohpe : Cloud Strategy, Platform Strategy, et son blog sur des sujets d'architecture moderne du logiciel. 🎙️ Soutenez le podcast If This Then Dev ! 🎙️ Chaque contribution aide à maintenir et améliorer nos épisodes. Cliquez ici pour nous soutenir sur Tipeee 🙏Archives | Site | Boutique | TikTok | Discord | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Youtube | Twitch | Job Board |

This week Magnum & Izzo discuss The Montauk Project and its dark history. EPISODE 130 OF THE SWERVE PODCAST ↩️

Jeremy Mack (from The Phoenix Project, which exposes dark money in Bay Area politics) is back for a discussion about upcoming elections, TogetherSF, the billionaire-funded, "pro-moderate" astroturfing group behind SF's Prop. D, and Balaji Srinivasan's plan for "The Network State," a techbro-led New World Order complete with a walled-off Hayes Valley.   The Phoenix Project: https://www.phoenixprojectnow.com/  Instagram: @phoenixprojnow | Twitter: @phoenixprojnow   Past episodes mentioned:  -Alison Collins on being recalled from SFUSD: https://www.patreon.com/posts/project-2025-in-111973369  -Anna Kirsch on the billionaire attempt to create a billionaire's compound in Solano County, "California Forever": https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-planning-f-107097104    "The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of 'Blues'" (Gil Duran, The New Republic): https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat   "SF Dems' sexual-misconduct inquiry puts politico Jay Cheng back in the spotlight" (Joe Rivano Barros, Mission Local): https://missionlocal.org/2024/05/sf-dems-sexual-misconduct-committee-puts-allegations-against-politico-jay-cheng-back-in-spotlight/      Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco  

Mama Ganuush hosts a discussion on whether people in the US actually stand a chance under American democracy, when money rules everything around us. Guests from The Phoenix Project (exposing dark money in Bay Area politics) and Pups for Palestine (what it says :) ). Salon HALA will return in 2025.  Salon HALA on Instagram  The Phoenix Project  Zinedogs |  Instagram @zinedogssf  Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco  

In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter and Nathan discuss Part Two of The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim. Written in the style of a novel, join them as they discuss the protagonist Maxine's journey of transforming the failing Phoenix Project from a big ball of mud into an agile, efficient architecture! -- Books Mentioned in this Episode -- Note: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. ---------------------------------------------------------- The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim https://amzn.to/3XJFg2u (paid link) ---------------- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5kj6DLCEWR5nHShlSYJI5L Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/book-overflow/id1745257325 X: https://x.com/bookoverflowpod Carter on X: https://x.com/cartermorgan Nathan's Functionally Imperative: www.functionallyimperative.com ---------------- Book Overflow is a podcast for software engineers, by software engineers dedicated to improving our craft by reading the best technical books in the world. Join Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups as they read and discuss a new technical book each week! The full book schedule and links to every major podcast player can be found at https://www.bookoverflow.io

In this episode of The Valley Today, host Janet Michael welcomed Kristen Gregg and Aliyha Gill from the Phoenix Project. Janet, who also serves as the Vice Chair of the United Way Northern Shenandoah Valley Board of Directors and this year's campaign chair, started the discussion reflecting on her dual role. Kristen is a children's advocate, and Aliyha is a sexual assault advocate at the Phoenix Project. They began by discussing the Phoenix Project's mission in Warren County, providing solutions to domestic and sexual violence through services like a 24-hour hotline, financial assistance, crisis intervention, and shelter. Kristen and Aliyha elaborated on their specific roles, highlighting their supportive counseling and advocacy work. Kristen focused on educational programs for children and parents, while Aliyha discussed accompanying survivors during forensic exams and providing counseling. The conversation then covered the Day of Caring Project, where Shenandoah Valley Orthodontics built playground equipment at the Phoenix Project site. Kristen explained the significance of having a safe outdoor space for children during their parents' counseling sessions. A key part of the discussion was the Healing Art Group supported by a United Way Impact Grant. Aliyha shared details about the program, which helps survivors of domestic and sexual violence express emotions through art. Both Kristen and Aliyha stressed the therapeutic benefits of art in the healing process. The conversation also touched on the Empty Place at the Table campaign, a national initiative to honor victims of domestic violence homicides by setting up empty table displays in public places like restaurants. This provides a discreet way for people to access information and support. October being Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the Phoenix Project's activities included putting up purple ribbons across local businesses and the courthouse to raise awareness. Additionally, the Wine Pull event on October 10th was highlighted as a major fundraiser. The conversation concluded with Kristen and Aaliyah discussing how the community can support the Phoenix Project through volunteering, donations of gift cards, and other contributions. They also shared their 24/7 hotline number, 540-635-2300, and emphasized the importance of maintaining confidentiality and financial autonomy for their clients. Kristen and Aaliyah provided information about their website and social media channels, urging listeners to visit for more details and resources. Visit their website: https://phoenix-project.org and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Art Bell - Harry Braun - The Phoenix Project, Shifting from Oil to Hydrogen

Send us comments, suggestions and ideas here! In this week's show we turn the clock back to 1942 to unveil the secret military experiment designed to turn the Naval destroyer escort ship the USS Eldridge invisible but accidently sent it into another dimension to the shock and horror of both the onlookers and the crew unfortunate enough to have been onboard. We explore the possibility of Einstein and Tesla's involvement, what horrible fate befell the crew, what the Bible has to say about being trapped between worlds and what spine tingling monstrosities the survivors saw in the void-space out of time. In the extended show we discuss whether it was a vast cover-up or one just one of the most successfully marketed conspiracy theories of all time. Before we wrap things up we even briefly discuss the tall tales of Al Beilek and his time-romping misadventures in tangentially related secret government programs which turned him into a baby. Thank you and enjoy the show! Check out the full-length episode here. &Check out CrypticChronicles.com for more great content like this! In this week's episode we discuss:WW2 Secret ProjectsDegaussing Einstein and Tesla The Day of the Philadelphia Experiment Inside The VortexThe AftermathSymptoms Suffered In the extended show (available at www.patreon.com/TheWholeRabbit) we go even further down the rabbit hole to discuss:The Bermuda TriangleTeleporting Bigfoot (Weaponized)AliensMorris K. Jessup Project Blue BookCarlos Allende Al Bielek's Story The Phoenix ProjectThe Montauk ProjectEach host is responsible for writing and creating the content they present. Most sections of this episode were prepared by Tim Hacker of the Cryptic Chronicles Podcast available at CrypticChronicles.com In the notes: red sections are written by Luke Madrid, green sections by Malachor 5, purple written by Heka Astra and blue by Mari Sama.SOURCES:The Ghosts of the Philadelphia ExperimentThe Philadelphia Experiment: Project InvisibilityThe Philadelphia Experiment Revelations!Support the show

We start our show with Joe Rivano Barros, senior editor at Mission Local who describes the monied interests behind Proposition D and the people who stand to profit from and the November elections should San Franciscans vote in favor of Proposition D. The proposition would slash the total number of oversight commissions, give the mayor more authority over those commissions and specifically weaken the police commission, giving the police chief ultimate authority to regulate officer conduct. Internal documents obtained by the Phoenix Project reveals the four year plan on Together SF, the nonprofit backed by tech billionaire Michael Moritz. Read more about that at Mission Local: https://missionlocal.org/2024/09/togethersf-wants-structural-change-in-city-hall-internal-doc-shows-its-just-beginning/ The Oakland Police are threatening to crack down on sex trafficking, but how exactly they plan to do that remains to be seen. Jennifer Lyle, Executive Director of MISSEY, an Oakland based organization which was founded to respond to sexual exploitation describes the criminalization of sex trafficking victims as an attack on poor people. Lyle details what could instead be done to protect vulnerable young women and gender expansive people from falling prey to violence and sex trafficking. — Subscribe to this podcast: https://plinkhq.com/i/1637968343?to=page Get in touch: lawanddisorder@kpfa.org Follow us on socials @LawAndDis: https://twitter.com/LawAndDis; https://www.instagram.com/lawanddis/ The post SF Prop D Would Weaken the City's Oversight Bodies; Plus Oakland Police Threaten to Crack Down on Sex Trafficking appeared first on KPFA.

Nicole Rodriguez is the President of the board of Urban Phoenix Project, an organization that is working to create a more livable city where people can comfortably walk, bike, take transit, and enjoy quality urban spaces. She has a varied background in urban planning, urban forestry and sustainability.

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.https://gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview hereGene Kim - Author, Researcher, DevOps Enthusiast & Founder of IT RevolutionCharles Humble - Freelance Techie, Podcaster, Editor, Author & ConsultantRESOURCESGenehttps://twitter.com/RealGeneKimhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/realgenekimhttp://www.realgenekim.meCharleshttps://twitter.com/charleshumblehttps://linkedin.com/in/charleshumblehttps://mastodon.social/@charleshumblehttps://conissaunce.comLinkshttps://youtu.be/vLHFuQjJR8Yhttps://youtu.be/5_rrQND3lpQhttps://youtu.be/dMwGfRINpz0https://youtu.be/KDHyxnLdOqchttps://youtu.be/AxqX9ovGViwhttps://youtu.be/JAl3QFae_dEhttps://youtu.be/l3XwpSKqNZwhttps://youtu.be/wtmW89I941Ihttps://youtu.be/5OjqD-ow8GEhttps://youtu.be/hIwVqt6qtc4DESCRIPTIONJoin Gene Kim and Charles Humble as they demystify the complexities of organizational dynamics, offering a comprehensive guide to navigating challenges and fostering success through his five ideals, backed by real-world stories and expert discussions.Discover the keys to organizational success with Gene Kim and Charles Humble in an insightful conversation, backed by real-world stories and expert discussions. [...]RECOMMENDED BOOKSGene Kim & Steve Spear • Wiring the Winning OrganizationGene Kim • The Unicorn ProjectGene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford • The Phoenix ProjectGene Kim, Nicole Forsgren & Jez Humble • AccelerateGene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, John Willis & Nicole Forsgren • The DevOps HandbookGene Kim & John Willis • Beyond The Phoenix ProjectDaniel Kahneman • Thinking, Fast and SlowElisabeth Hendrickson • Explore It!Gerald M. Weinberg • Becoming a Technical LeaderTwitterInstagramLinkedInFacebookLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

0:08 — Cheuk Kwan is author of Have You Eaten Yet: Stories from Chinese restaurants around the world. 0:21 — Veena B. Dubal is a Professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. 0:33 — Amira Rose Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin and the co-host of the Feminist sports podcast, Burn it All Down and the host of Season 3 of American Prodigies. 0:45 — Jeremy Mack is Executive Director & Treasurer of The Phoenix Project: a grassroots organization researching the role of Tech and Real Estate billionaire money and its influence in San Francisco.  The post CA Supreme Upholds Prop 22; Plus, Gender Policing and Racism in Women's Sports; Phoenix Project Tracks Influence of Tech and Real Estate Billionaires in San Francisco City Politics appeared first on KPFA.

Justin Huhn, Founder and Publisher of the Uranium Insider, joins me for yet another very comprehensive macro update on the supply and demand fundamentals for uranium and the nuclear fuel sector, how the longer-term contracting cycle is setting up, and then what he is watching and how he is positioning in the uranium equities in this most recent corrective move lower in the sector.   This is a longer-format follow up to our prior conversation in April, because a lot of nuclear and uranium sector news has been announced, and Justin guides us through with pro tips on how to approach investing in this sector.  (in fact, this may be the longest daily editorial we've ever put out on the KE Report, but it is packed with information, gets into a rapid-fire segment midway through, and then ends with a bang)   We start off reviewing the flurry of news out of Kazakhstan from the largest uranium swing producer in the sector Kazatomprom. In addition to a shortfall of sulphuric acid, increased taxes on production, expected to crimp supply; and yet a surprise announcement of an increase in overall production (while showing a big decrease in their JV production for Canada with Cameco), Justin walks us through all the nuances.   We also discuss the continued unstable politics in Niger making future supply still in question, along with the Australian ban on the Jabiluka uranium deposit; blocking Energy Resources of Australia and Rio Tinto (RIO) from bringing that supply online.  We also discuss expectations for production output from both Cameco (CCO.V) (CCJ), and the French producer Orano, which are not expected to grow output that much over the next year or two.  All of this points to a much more constrained output from global uranium producers, even in face of growing demand.   One bright spot for production is the ramping up of production from US producers like  enCore Energy (EU.V) (EU), Energy Fuels (EFR.TO) (UUUU), Ur-Energy (URE.TO) (URG), Peninsula Energy (PEN.AX) (PENMF), and Uranium Energy Corp (UEC).    Justin provides his thoughts on investing in US-based uranium companies, what he feels their reasonable collective output levels are, and also he also discusses the pros and cons of exploration companies and jurisdiction risk in certain states.   We then delve into all the increasing uranium demand from more countries committing to expand nuclear power buildouts, along with life-extensions on existing reactors, and the role that small modular reactors could have in powering AI data centers and manufacturing or in phasing out coal plants as another demand driver.  Justin touches upon the ongoing bottlenecks with regards to sourcing enriched uranium fuel and enrichment & processing due to the recent sanctions placed on Russian supplies and the waivers that utility companies are waiting for more clarity on.  He also breaks down the bifurcation between the expectations and sentiment from the utility companies and nuclear fuel buyers, compared to the realities that the uranium mining companies have been forecasting; with regards to realistic future mine supply and incentive prices.   Next we get into the key larger uranium development projects in the works and just how many years from actual production all of them are; with no new projects expected to come online until 2027 at the earliest, but likely a lot longer. This review includes the Arrow Project from NexGen Energy (TSX: NXE) (NYSE: NXE), the PLS (Patterson Lake) Project held by Fission Uranium (TSX: FCU) (OTCQX: FCUUF), that is currently being acquired by Paladin Energy (ASX: PDN) (OTCQX: PALAF), and the Phoenix Project held by Denison Mines (TSX: DML) (NYSE: DNN).   While these are all very robust projects, they will not be adding to global production for at least several years, which raises the question of where all the new uranium supply will come from in the interim?   We wrap up by getting Justin's thoughts on the uranium exploration stocks operating in the Athabasca Basin and Thelon Basin of Canada, and where the biggest opportunities and concerns are from his vantage point. With so many uranium discoveries having already been made, the question is posed if any new discoveries will ultimately matter to the medium-term supply fundamentals? Justin points to the ultra-high-grade uranium discovered over the last few years at the Hurricane Deposit, held by IsoEnergy Ltd (TSX: ISO) (OTCQX: ISENF), and the potential of using the Sabre technology from Orano to extract it, and additionally Denison's Phoenix Project.  If more deposits like that can be found, then it will be impactful, and could bring more projects up the development batting order.   Click here to visit the Uranium Insider website.

In this episode of the CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend interviews Gene Kim, the renowned author of "The Phoenix Project" and "The Unicorn Project." Gene shares his experiences and insights from his extensive DevOps and IT leadership career, exploring how these fictional narratives reflect real-world challenges and triumphs in technology transformations. Gene discusses the role [...]

Gene Kim has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc. for 13 years, running an enterprise security software company. As an author, Gene's books have sold over 1 million copies, including earning recognition as a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He most recently co-authored Wiring the Winning Organization, as well as The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and the Shingo Publication Award-winning book, Accelerate. Since 2014, he has been the organizer and program chair of the DevOps Enterprise Summit, now called the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit, which studies the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.   Topics of Discussion: [2:11] Gene joins the show and shares more about his career background. [9:51] Gene discusses the three key mechanisms that are common across various frameworks and methodologies: certification, simplification, and amplification. [10:06] What has changed since Gene released his first book in 2004? [14:42] The two revelations in the book. [18:25] The importance of layer 3 (organizational wiring) in complex systems. [21:16] Reducing communication barriers in software development teams. [24:33] Overcoming obstacles as a team. [25:56] IT department's role in business, including challenges with communication and coordination. [27:06] The Check Box project. [30:11] Is the concept of the IT department a good or bad idea? [32:11] What caused the DevOps moment? [38:40] Wiring software organizations for success. [43:08] How Gene learned what good architecture looks like. [44:41] Gene is blown away by how important the notion of independence of action is.   Mentioned in this Episode: Clear Measure Way Architect Forum Software Engineer Forum Programming with Palermo — New Video Podcast! Email us at programming@palermo.net. Clear Measure, Inc. (Sponsor) .NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Available on Amazon! Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events! Gene Kim Gene Kim on X Gene Kim LinkedIn The Unicorn Project, by Gene Kim The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, et al. “What to Expect at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit at Vegas 2024” “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System”   Want to Learn More? Visit AzureDevOps.Show for show notes and additional episodes.

גיבוי הוא מסוג הדברים שאף פעם לא עומדים בראש סדר העדיפויות. אבל כמו בסרטי אימה, מה שהתעלמנו ממנו עלול לצוץ ולרדוף אותנו, בדיוק ברגע הכי לא מתאים. איך מונעים מראש את הקטסטרופה שכולנו חוששים ממנה? איך מוודאים שכל מה ששמרנו דיגיטלית, לא יעלם?לרן בר-זיק יש הרבה מה לומר על גיבויים, גם ברמה המקצועית, כמפתח וארכיטקט, וגם ברמה האישית, כעיתונאי, כאדם פרטי וכאיש משפחה. שוחחנו על סיפורי אסונות בז'אנר הגיבויים, על האחריות של בוני אתרים ביחס לגיבוי, על מה זה Disaster Recovery, על גיבוי קר ועל גיבוי חם, על פרוטוקול הגיבוי האישי אצל בר-זיק בבית, על מה לא לגבות ואפילו לבער ולהשמיד, ועל למה כדאי לכתוב דוקומנטציה רק אחרי שאוכלים ארוחת צהריים.האזנה נעימה,בועז לביאלספר The Phoenix Project:https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592פוסט של ערן שפירא על חיסכון בגיבוי:https://medium.com/@lxeran/how-we-decreased-our-monthly-aws-costs-from-10-000-to-1-500-f926f1fd4eef

In today's episode, I'm joined by Ciaran Lee, founder and Chief Engineer of Intercom for a discussion that touches on the genesis of Intercom and factors that enabled their success, scaling challenges when you're dealing with double-digit growth month to month, load balancers, canary deployment, the benefits of making many small deployments, how a robust testing environment benefits the hiring process, and the benefits of in-person vs remote work.The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim et al.The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim et al.IntercomCiaran Lee on LinkedInCiaran Lee on Twitter

In this episode of the Identity at the Center podcast, hosts Jeff and Jim return from Identiverse 2024 and share their experiences from the conference held in Las Vegas. They discuss notable moments, including unique conference swag and memorable interactions. Special guest Adam Michael, CISO and adjunct professor at Texas A&M University, joins the conversation to discuss the evolution of identity management to identity security at the university. Adam delves into the complexities of managing identity in a higher education environment and shares insights on implementing DevOps practices. The episode covers topics like AI's impact on teaching, infrastructure as code, ROI of identity security projects, and the challenges and benefits of centralizing IT services. Connect with Adam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amikeal/ The Phoenix Project (book): https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592 Attending Identity Week in Europe, America, or Asia? Use our discount code IDAC30 for 30% off your registration fee! Learn more at: Europe: https://www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/identity-week/ America: https://www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/identity-week-america Asia: https://www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/identity-week-asia/ Connect with us on LinkedIn: Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/ Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/ Visit the show on the web at idacpodcast.com and follow @IDACPodcast on Twitter.

Guest Bio: Mark Schwartz joined AWS as an Enterprise Strategist and Evangelist in July 2017. In this role, Mark works with enterprise technology executives to share experiences and strategies for how the cloud can help them increase speed and agility while devoting more of their resources to their customers. Mark has extensive experience as an IT leader in the government, private sector, and the nonprofit world, and with organizations ranging from startup to large. Prior to joining AWS, he was CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (in the Department of Homeland Security), where he led a large digital transformation effort, moving the agency to the cloud, introducing and refining DevOps and Agile techniques, and adopting user-centric design approaches. From his work at USCIS, he developed a reputation for leading transformation in organizations that are resistant to change, obsessed with security, subject to considerable regulation and oversight, and deeply bureaucratic. Before USCIS, Mark was CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange, a leader in global youth exchange programs, and CEO of a software company. Mark is the author of The Art of Business Value , A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, War, Peace and IT and The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy. Mark speaks at conferences internationally on such subjects as DevOps, Leading Change, Driving Innovation in IT, and Managing Agility in Bureaucratic Organizations. He has been recognized as a Computerworld Premier IT Leader and received awards for Leadership in Technology Innovation, the Federal 100 IT Leaders, and a CIO Magazine 100 award. Mark has both a BS and MA degree from Yale University, and an MBA from Wharton.   Social Media/ Website: Mark's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/innovativecio Mark's AWS Executive Insights page with links to all his blogs posts and books https://aws.amazon.com/ar/executive-insights/enterprise-strategists/mark-schwartz/  Books/ Resources: The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy: Digital Transformation with the Monkey, the Razor and the Sumo Wrestler by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delicate-Art-Bureaucracy-Transformation-Wrestler-ebook/dp/B086XM4WCK/ The Art of Business Value by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Business-Value-Mark-Schwartz/dp/1942788045 A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seat-Table-Leadership-Age-Agility/dp/1942788118/ War, Peace and IT: Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age by Mark Schwartz https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Peace-Business-Leadership-Technology/dp/1942788711 Reaching Cloud Velocity: A Leader's Guide to Success in the AWS Cloud by Jonathan Allen et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reaching-Cloud-Velocity-Leaders-Success/dp/B086PTDP51 Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT by Stephen Orban https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ahead-Cloud-Practices-Navigating-Enterprise-ebook/dp/B07BYQTGJ7 Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy https://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineers-Victory-Problem-Solvers-Turned-ebook/dp/B00ADNPCC0 The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-Devops-Helping-Business/dp/1942788290/ The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unicorn-Project-Disruption-Redshirts-Overthrowing/dp/1942788762   Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku:  Mark, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. Mark Schwartz: Thank you, my pleasure. Ula Ojiaku: Great. Now let's start with you know, the question I usually ask my guests: who's Mark? What makes him tick? Mark Schwartz:  And they can answer that question. It's not a hard one. where to start? Um, you know, I always enjoy my work. That's a thing about me. I like to think that people have fun working with me because I tend to laugh a lot. And even you know, when the work is boring, I find ways to make it interesting. I just enjoy doing things and accomplishing things. I think if we're going to talk about my books, and some of the things I've done later, an important thing to realize is that, I started out, you know, when I went, when I was in high school, when I went to college, I was pretty sure I wanted to study computer science and get involved with these computer things. But when I was actually studying, I realized there were all these other interesting areas, I'm just, you know, endlessly curious. And so, I wound up studying all kinds of other things, in addition. And the result was that when I finished college, I decided to go to graduate school in philosophy. And I spent a few years getting a master's degree in philosophy. And the fact that I'm curious about so many things and read so many different things, I think it enters into a lot of what I do. I like to pull analogies from non-IT related fields and, and, and I'll call upon all the things I've learned in all sorts of different areas, as I'm writing and speaking and working. Ula Ojiaku:  It shines through in your book, definitely. Mark Schwartz:  Yes, I think it does. That's partly an explanation for what you see in my books. I think, um, you know, I sometimes say that I have trouble reading business books generally. Because I kind of find them boring. They tend to make the same point over and over again, and to be very just so one directional, you know, just on the same subject, and it's a little bit odd because in every other subject, the books tend to refer to other books in other fields and there's this extra dimension and that helps you understand what the author is getting at. But in business books, they, you know, aside from having a quote now and then from a famous leader or something, they don't tend to do that, they don't, they don't sort of call upon the whole history of literature and writing. And so, I have a little bit of fun in writing my books in trying to see if I can add an extra dimension just by reference and by bringing in other things that are a little bit orthogonal to the subject matter. Ula Ojiaku:  And that kind of, you know, brings home the point that life isn't black and white. It's actually a complex or a complex kind of, you know, maze and of different disciplines, different ideologies and different viewpoints that make it what it is really. Mark Schwartz:  Yeah well, of course, that was part of the fun of my recent book on Bureaucracy. You know, because I know we all, we want to throw up when we encounter bureaucracy, you know, it disturbs us in so many ways. And one of the things I wanted to say in the book is, well, actually bureaucracy is all around you all the time in unexpected places and it usually doesn't drive you crazy, actually. Yeah... Ula Ojiaku:  Well, I have a lot of questions for you on your book, The Delicate Art of Bureaucracy, which is a catchy, catchy title on its own, very clever. But before we get to that, what do you do when you're not working? I know, you said you love work and you've also said that you're curious about so many things, which means that you read broadly - that's my interpretation. So, what do you do when you're not ‘working'? Mark Schwartz:  Yes, I read broadly, is one thing. In the past, I played the guitar a lot. And I don't quite as much lately. I don't know why, you know, I'll start doing it again. I'm sure at some point. But while I was living in San Francisco, I was actually playing in bars and coffee shops, I have a singer, who I performed with. Ula Ojiaku: Really? Wow! Mark Schwartz: And that was really fun. And then the other thing I do is travel, I've really traveled a lot. And, yeah, there was one period in my life where for about five years, I was bumming around the world with a backpack with you know, occasional returns to the States to work a little bit and make some money and then go traveling again. So, one of the joys of my current job is that, I get to do a lot of traveling to interesting places. Ula Ojiaku:  So, where would you say is your ideal getaway destination? Mark Schwartz:  Oh, let's see. I'm a big fan of Brazil. That, I have good friends there and it's really nice to see them and the atmosphere is always kind of fun there. Ula Ojiaku: Okay. Mark Schwartz: I don't know what I've discovered so many places around the world that I've really loved being. I lived in Japan for a year and that is a place that I love to go to, especially for the food. Yeah, I like good food. But I don't know I've found so many places that made me feel like I'd like to spend more time there. And of course, you can't really spend more time everywhere. Ula Ojiaku:  Interesting. So, let's, let's go to your book, “The Art of Delicate Bureaucracy”. What was the inspiration behind that book? Mark Schwartz:  Well, for all of my books, before I wrote, before I wrote them, I was thinking, ‘why hasn't anybody else written a book on this topic?' People don't write books on bureaucracy, at least not, you know, popular books, there are academic books on bureaucracy. And the same thing happened to me with my first book, “The Art of Business Value”, where I said to myself, we keep talking about business value in the IT world, like, is it obvious what it means? You know, what, why isn't anybody writing a book about what business value means? So, bureaucracy is one of those things. I have a lot of experience with it first of all, I was a CIO in a government agency. But it turns out, it's not just the government, whenever I tell people about my government experience, when I speak at a conference, people come up to me afterwards and say, ‘Oh, my company's just like that. I work for a financial services company; we have lots of bureaucracy'. And I work with a lot of people who are trying to pull off some sort of digital transformation, which is change on a big scale, that's changing traditional organizations on a big scale. And bureaucracy is always in their way because bureaucracy tends to resist change; it strongly tends to resist change. So, if you're doing a big change, then you're probably going to come up against it. So, I thought maybe with my experience as a bureaucrat, or at least experience in the big bureaucracy, I could give some pointers to people who are trying to cause big change, and yet are facing bureaucratic obstacles. And I can't imagine that there's any organization, at least any large organization that does not have bureaucratic obstacles to digital transformation. So, that got me started on it. And then as I started to think about bureaucracy and research it, I realized this is actually a really interesting topic. Ula Ojiaku:  You had an interesting introduction to the book. You said, “we are bureaucrats all.” Why that claim, you actually were saying, everyone is a bureaucrat, and I know you made a statement that's similar to that earlier on in this conversation - why? Mark Schwartz:  Well, of course, I have to define in the book, what I mean by bureaucracy and all that. And I follow the generally what's accepted as the academic definition. It mostly comes from the sociologist Max Vabre, who is writing around 1920. And, and he talks a lot about bureaucracy, and it's fairly complicated, but I simplify it in the book. Basically, what it comes down to is a bureaucracy is a way of organizing socially, that has rigid formal roles for people and rigid formal rules. And that's the essence of it. You know, bureaucracy, there are rules and they have to be applied uniformly to everybody. And there's a division of labor and you know, a hierarchy. So, it has rigid roles of people who have to sign off on things and approve things. So, with that is the definition. I think it, it connects with the very human tendency to try to structure things and constantly improve them and optimize them. So, if you find a good way of doing something, you tend to turn it into a rule, you know, this is the way it should be done from now on. Ula Ojiaku: Best practice! Mark Schwartz: It's the best practice. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also, we, in, social organization, we'd like people to be accountable or responsible for things. And we know that you can't hold somebody accountable unless they have authority to perform their role. So, when you put those things together, it's very natural for us to set up these organizational systems, where we assign roles to people, and give them authority, and we make rules that encapsulate the best way to do things. And, essentially, that's bureaucracy. So, bureaucracy, I find, is everywhere around us in one form or another. But it doesn't drive us crazy most of the time, so we don't notice it. Ula Ojiaku:  Maybe if it's serving us, then we wouldn't notice it. But… Mark Schwartz:  It does serve. And if you look at the cases where it does drive us crazy, they have certain things in common. And in the book, I say there are three characteristics that bureaucracies often take on which they don't need to, it's not part of the definition of bureaucracy, but they often take on these characteristics. And it's those three characteristics that are what drive us crazy. And so, the goal, ultimately is to eliminate those three characteristics or turn them into something else. Ula Ojiaku: I know that the listeners would be curious to know what the three characteristics of bureaucracy that drive us crazy are? Is that so or should I just tell them go buy the book? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, go buy the book! Well, let me tell you the three characteristics, and also their opposite, which is what we really want. So, the first characteristic that drives us crazy, I think, is that bureaucracies tend to be bloated instead of lean, that would be the opposite in my view. There's no reason why a bureaucracy has to be bloated and wasteful. It could be lean, but it's one of those things that bureaucracy tends to become. So that's the first one. The second one is that bureaucracies tend to petrify, as opposed to learning. So, when I say petrifies, I mean that the rules and the bureaucracy don't change, or don't change as often as they should, or don't change continuously, which is really what rules should do. Now, that's not necessarily a characteristic of bureaucracy, but the definition, the definition says the rules have to be applied rigorously. You know, once you have a rule, everybody has to follow it. But it doesn't say that the rules have to stay the same forever, they can change. The opposite of a petrified bureaucracy is a learning bureaucracy, where the rules are constantly adjusted, based on what the people in the organization learn. And there are plenty of good examples of learning bureaucracies out there. And your goal is to transform the one into the other, the petrified into the learning. The third is, bureaucracies tend to be coercive, rather than enabling. Coercive, meaning that they're there to control employee behavior, to force employees to behave in ways that otherwise they wouldn't want to. They tend to be ‘no' saying, they say ‘no', a lot. Your bureaucracy for your expense reporting policy in your company probably says, ‘no that expense is no good because X Y and Z.' There are plenty of examples of enabling bureaucracies, where the point is not to stop you from doing things or force you to do something you don't want to. But the bureaucracy provides a support structure, provide best practices, as you said, that help you do your job well. And there's no reason why bureaucracies can't do that. So, the three bad characteristics are bloat, coercion, and petrify. Ula Ojiaku: Okay, nice. So, it sounds like the way you've described bureaucracy, when you look at it from a positive slant, would it be the same thing as guardrails, putting guardrails in place, or giving people the right degree of freedom? Mark Schwartz: Yeah, that's exactly the idea. What I find is that guardrails and automation are ways of implementing bureaucracy, that lead to those three good characteristics rather than the bad ones. Let's say in software development, in DevOps, for example, it's a good idea to put guardrails, security guardrails, for example, around what people can do, and automated security tests and things like that. Because then the developers or the DevOps teams, they can go charging ahead full speed, knowing that they can't do anything wrong, you know, because the guardrails are there. And they get immediate feedback, if they do something that's going to put them outside the guardrails and they can just immediately fix it. So, it's very empowering for them, lets them move fast. And it also gets rid of that coercive element of you know, I write some code and then somebody comes in afterwards and says, ‘no, you can't deploy that'. That's annoying. Instead, I can run the security tests myself, as a developer, see if there's anything that's problematic, fix it right away if I want to, so it's all under my control. But the end result is still the same. The bureaucracy is still there. It's just automated and implemented as guardrails. Ula Ojiaku:  It's enabling, like you said before, instead of hindering. Mark Schwartz:  And it's lean, because it's very inefficient and wasteful, if you write some code, and then at the very end of the development process, somebody finds a security flaw. And now you have to remember what you were doing. And, you know, go back and relearn your code and make changes then, so that's wasteful, as opposed to lean. It's coercive, as opposed to enabling. And if you're good at doing these things, then you keep updating your guardrails and your security tests based on new security threats you learn about or new policies or whatever. So, you make a learning bureaucracy as well. Ula Ojiaku:  Interesting. In the book as well, you said you want us to be calm, chaos monkeys, knights of Ockham, lean sumo wrestlers, very interesting oxymoron there. And you know, black belt experts, could you tell us more about those terms? Why did you use those terms? Mark Schwartz:  Because they made me laugh of course. Ula Ojiaku: Well, they made me laugh too. Mark Schwartz: So, I thought about what I learned about coping with bureaucracy, especially in my government job, but also from reading and from talking to other people. And I realized I had about, you know, 30 techniques for coping with bureaucracy, I call them plays. And I just grabbed those 30 techniques, but I thought about it, and I realized they divided into three. And the three, I could sort of associate with a personality, almost. You know, that these 10 plays are associated with this personality, these 10 plays are associated with this one. And I came up with these three personalities that I thought describe those plays. And the three personalities are the monkey, and the razor, and the sumo wrestler. And, you know, I think, I could stop right there, because it's probably obvious why I associate those with these plays, but I will go a little further. Ula Ojiaku: Please… Mark Schwartz: So, I realized that some of the things we did, the ones that I call the plays of the monkey, the way of the monkey, those things had to do with provoking. You know, monkeys are mischievous, provocative, and sometimes annoying. And a bunch of the techniques had to do with trying to be provocative. And the razor and I'll give you some examples in a minute. The razor, to me is all about being lean. It's about trimming away waste. And it also refers to the philosophical principle of Ockham's razor. Ockham was a medieval philosopher, right, William of Ockham. And he's generally credited with an idea that something like if you have a choice between a simple explanation, and a complicated explanation, you should prefer the simple one. That's not really what he said. But that's, that's what most people associated with him. That's the principle of Ockham's razor. And, and so it's called a principle of ontological parsimony, meaning, you shouldn't presuppose the existence of more things than you need to, in order to explain something. So, you know, don't make up nymphs. And you know, I don't know, water dryads and whatever's to explain something that you can equally just explain through simple physical laws. Ula Ojiaku:  Just saying, 'keep it simple...' Mark Schwartz:  Yeah, keep it simple, in a way, right? So that's called the principle of ontological parsimony. And I said, there's a similar principle of bureaucratic parsimony, which says that if you're trying to implement a control, and you can do it in a simple way, or you could do it in a really complicated way, do it a simple way. And so, it's a principle of leanness because I find that bureaucracies, when they get bloated, they have these really complicated wasteful ways of doing something that they could they could accomplish exactly the same thing, but in a simpler way. So that's the razor. And then a sumo wrestler. Well, Sumo is the sport where, you know, two massive people sort of bang into each other, right? And the goal is you want to push your opponent out of the ring, or you want to make them fall and touch the ground with something other than their feet. And if you can do either of those things, you win. So, if you're a big massive person and you're trying to accomplish those things, you might think that the best thing to do is charge your opponent and push really hard. But if your opponent then just either dodges or just is soft and lets you push, well, you're probably going to go flying out of the ring, right? So, one of the principles in Sumo is you want to use your opponent's strength against them. And if they push hard, now, go ahead, give them a little pull. And, you know, let them push even harder. And I realized that some of these techniques for overcoming bureaucracy have to do with using bureaucracy actually, on your side, you know, the using the strength of bureaucracy against it. So that's why the sumo wrestler. So, I'll give you examples now on each one, now that I've described my three personalities. So, the monkey does what is sometimes referred to as provoking and inspecting or provoking and observing, in parallel with the Agile principle of inspect and adapt. So, provoke and observe, what the monkey does is try something that's probably outside the rules, or at least is, you know, a borderline and watches what happens. So, an example where we use this is that we have these rules in Homeland Security that essentially said, if you were going to do an IT project, you have to produce 87 documents. And each document had a template, and you have to fill in each section of the template. And these documents would run to hundreds of pages. And so, using the persona of the monkey, let's say, we started to turn in these documents. But in each section of the template, we just wrote a one sentence, one sentence answer, you know, we're very short answer instead of writing pages and pages. And we wanted to see what would happen if we did that, because there was no rule that said, it had to be a really long answer. And eventually, we started to provoke even more, we just left out sections that we thought didn't make any sense for what we were doing. And all of this was unprecedented, you know, it caused a lot of fear. It turned out, and this sometimes happens, that the enforcers of this policy, they were happy when they said, “We've never wanted anybody to write these really long answers to these things, we have to read them. And you know, the intention wasn't to slow people down. As long as you're giving us the right information. That's all we need.” So, in this case, provoking just it turned out that we could defeat a bunch of bureaucracy there, we could, we could make things a lot leaner because nobody objected. But sometimes people do object. And if they do, then you learn exactly what the resistance is, who it is, is resisting, and that gives you valuable information, when you're trying to figure out how to overcome it. So that's the monkey. You know, let's try something a little playful and mischievous, and see what happens. The razor, well, that one follows also on my 87 documents, because we then set up an alternative way of doing things that had only 15 documents. And where there had been 13 gate reviews required for each project. We reduced it to two. And so, all we did, you know, we just used our little razor to trim away all the excess stuff that was in the bureaucratic requirements. And then we showed people that those 15 documents and those two gate reviews accomplished exactly the same thing as the 87 documents and the 13 gate reviews. That's the principle of the razor, that's how the razor works. The sumo wrestler, also a favorite of mine. So, we were trying to convince the bureaucracy to let us do DevOps and to be agile, and it was resisting. And people kept pointing to a policy that said, you can't do these things. And so, we wrote our own policy. And it was a very good bureaucratic policy looked exactly like every bureaucratic document out there. But it essentially said you must use DevOps and you must be agile on it, you know, it set up a perfect bureaucracy around that it's set up ways of checking to make sure everybody was using DevOps. And the theory behind it was the auditors when they came to audit us and said we were being naughty because we were doing DevOps. Their argument was we looked at the policy and we looked at what you're doing, and they were different. And that's the way auditing works. That was the, you know, GAO, the Government Accountability Office, and the Inspector General and all that. So, we figured if we had a policy that said you must do DevOps, and they audited us, well, they would actually be enforcing the policy, you know, they'd be criticizing any part of the organization that was not using DevOps and I thought that's great. So, this is how you use the strength of the bureaucracy against the bureaucracy or not really, against even, you know, it's perfectly good, perfect… Ula Ojiaku:  To help the bureaucracy yeah, to help them to improve, improve the organization. But thinking about the monkey though, being provocative and mischievous, do you think that there has to be an element of you know, relationship and trust in place first, before… you can't just you know… you're new, and you've just gotten through the door and you start being a monkey… you probably will be taken back to wherever you came from! What do you think? Mark Schwartz:  Well, it helps if you're giggling while you do it. But you know, I think the goal here is to figure out the right levers that are going to move things. And sometimes you do have to push a little bit hard, you know, you do need to take people out of their comfort zone. Usually, you want to do these things in a way that takes into account people's feelings, and you know, is likely to move them in the right direction, rather than making them dig in their heels. But I'll give you a couple of examples of Monkey tactics that are less comfortable for people. One is simply, you know, there's a status quo bias. It's a known, well-known cognitive bias; people tend to prefer the status quo or look the other way about it's failings and stuff. So often, when you're trying to make a change, people say, we're fine the way we are, you know, everything's okay. So, one of the things the monkey tries to do is, is to make it clear that the status quo is not acceptable, you know, to show people that it actually if they think about it, it's no good. And so, for example, when we decided to move to the cloud, instead of working in our DHS data center, people said - of course at the time it was a big concern, ‘was the cloud secure enough?' And in the persona of the monkey, the right response is, ‘are we secure enough now?' You know, ‘don't you realize that we're not happy with our security posture today?' ‘It's not like, the cloud has proved itself. I mean, we have to compare our security in the cloud versus our security in the data center. And yes, I'm very sure it'll be better in the cloud and here's why…' But you can't start from the assumption that you are fine right now. In general, when we're talking about the cloud, that's the situation. Companies are using their own data centers. And it's like, you know, we have to teach them that they can do better in the cloud. But the truth is that they're not happy in their own data centers, if they think about it, right? There are security issues, there are performance issues, there are cost issues. And they're aware of those issues, right, they just look the other way. And because they're comfortable with the status quo, so the monkey has to sort of shake people up and say, ‘It's not okay, what you're doing now!' Another example, and this is really harsh, and I wouldn't use it in most cases. But let's say that this was in Homeland Security. Let's say that Homeland Security is enforcing a very bureaucratic process that results in IT projects, taking five years instead of six months. And let's say, you know, the process is there on paper, the rules say, ‘Do this', the people are interpreting the rules in a way that makes things take five years. Sometimes, the monkey has to go to somebody who's in their way and say, ‘We are in the Department of Homeland Security, this IT project is going to make people more secure in the homeland. Are you comfortable with the fact that you are preventing people from being more secure for the next four and a half years, when we could…' You know, it's a matter of personalizing it. And that sometimes is what's necessary to get people to start thinking creatively about how they can change the bureaucracy. You know, ‘I hate to say it, but you're a murderer', you know, essentially is the message. It's a monkey message. And like I said, you know, it's not the preferred way to go about doing things. But if you have to, I mean, the lives of people are at stake, and you've got to find a way to get there. Ula Ojiaku:  So how can leaders because your book, The Art of Business Value, in your book, you said that “leaders create the language of the organization, and they set up incentives and define value in a way that elicits desired outcomes.” So, in essence, I understand that statement to mean that leaders set the tone, and you know, kind of create the environment for things to happen. So, how can leaders implement or apply bureaucracy in a way that enables an organization where, before it was seen as a hindrance, how can they do this? Mark Schwartz:  My thought process was, if we all agree, we're gonna try to maximize business value? How do we know what we mean by it? And I realized, a lot of Agile people, you know, people in our Agile and DevOps community, were being a little bit lazy. You know, they were thinking, ‘Oh, business value, you know, it's returns on investment, or, you know, it's up to the business (to define) what's business value.' The tech people just, you know, do the work of providing a solution. And to me, that's too lazy. If you're going to be agile, be it you have to be more proactive about making sure you're delivering business value. So, you have to understand what it means. You have to actually do the work of, you know, figuring out what it means. And what it means is not at all obvious. And, you know, you might think it has something to do with return on investment or shareholder value or something like that. But when you really closely examine it, that is not the right way to define it, when it comes to deciding what its efforts to prioritize and all that that's, you know, the case that the book makes, and I explain why that's true. Instead, I say you have to think of business value within the context of the business's strategy and its objectives as a business. There's no like, abstract, this has more business value than this because we calculated an ROI or something like that, that doesn't work reprioritizing. It's always asked within the context of a particular business strategy. And the business strategy is a direction from leadership. There might be input from everybody else, but ultimately, you have leaders in the organization who are deciding what the strategic objectives are. So, for example, if you are a traditional bank, or traditional financial services company, and you look around you and you see there are all these new FinTech companies that are disrupting the industry, and you're worried, well there are a lot of different ways you can respond to those disruptive FinTechs. And how you're going to choose to respond depends on your preferences, it depends on the situation of your company, in the industry, the history of your company, all of those things. But of the many ways you can respond to that disruption, you're going to choose one as the leader of your enterprise. Well, what adds business value is whatever supports that direction you choose to go. You can't think of business value outside of that direction, you know. That's the case that I make. So, leaders don't just set the tone and the culture there, they're actually setting strategic direction that determines what has business value. And then the people who are executing the agile teams have to take it upon themselves to make sure that whatever they're doing is going to add business value in that sense.   So, the role of leadership then becomes direction setting and visioning for the future and communicating the vision to the people who are working and providing feedback, you know, on whether things are actually adding business value or not . And that's the key responsibility. Now, in order to do that, in order to motivate people to deliver according to that idea of business value, there are certain techniques as a leader that you have to keep in mind, there are ways that you get people, you get a big organization to sort of follow you. And one of the ones that's become most important to me to think about after talking to a lot of leaders about how they're running their organizations, and what's working, is using middle management as a lever for accomplishing those things. So often, I'll talk to leaders of a business, and they'll say, our problem is the frozen middle, middle management is, you know, they're just not changing the way we want, we want to, we want to cause a big transformation, but middle management is getting in the way. And I tell them, ‘that's pretty much a myth.' You know, ‘that's not actually what's happening, let's look more closely at your organization.' Almost always, middle management is still trying to do the best they can, given the situation that they're in. And the way that you get them to align themselves behind the change is, you change their incentives or their role definition, or how you tell them what you're expecting from them, you don't say “change”, you know, and start doing X and Y, you change what success looks like for their position. And then they adapt to it by becoming engaged and finding ways to get there. So, there's almost always a leadership problem when you have that frozen middle effect. And, and I've seen it work really well that, you know, all of a sudden, you get this big leverage, because you just do a little bit of tweaking of role definitions, and bring everybody into solving the problem. And actually, there's an example, I love to talk about a history book, like I said before, I like to bring in other things, right? It's called the Engineers of Victory. And it's about World War Two, the Allies realized that they had to solve a set of problems, I think there was six or so problems. One of them was how do you land troops on a beach that's heavily defended? They realize they were just not going to be able to win the war until they could do that. But nobody knew how to do it. Because, you know, obviously, the bad guys are there on the beach, they're dug in, they put barbed wire everywhere, and mines, and you know, all this stuff. And it's just going to be a slaughter if you try to land on the beach. So, this book, Engineers of Victory, makes the case that what really won the war, was figuring out those solutions. And who was responsible for figuring out those solutions? It was middle management, basically. It was the, you know, within the structure of the army, it was the people not at the top who had big authority, you know, the generals, and it was not the troops themselves, because they weren't in a position to figure out these things. It was middle management that could see across different parts of the organization that could try things and see whether they worked or not, that, you know, essentially could run their own mini skunkworks projects. And eventually, they came up with the solutions to these problems. So, I think that's very encouraging for the role of middle management, you know, that a lot of problems have to be solved at that layer in order to pull off a transformation. And it really can be done. And this is a beautiful example of it. Ula Ojiaku:  It reminds me of, you know, my experience in a few transformation initiatives. So, the middle, the people who are termed to be in the frozen middle, are, like you said, they want to do what's best for the company, and they show up wanting to do their best work, but it's really about finding out, ‘Where do I fit in, (with) all this change that's happening?' You know, ‘if my role is going away, if the teams are going to be more empowered, that means I'm not telling them what to do, but then what do I do now?' So, the clarity of what the ‘New World' means for them, and what's in it for them, would help, you know, make them more effective. Mark Schwartz: And the mistake that's often made is to say to them, ‘start doing DevOps' or, you know, ‘start doing agile or something.' Because if you don't change the definition of success, or you don't change the incentives that, you know, then it's just, make work and they're going to resist it. You know, if you say your incentive is to get really fast feedback or you know, one of the other goals of DevOps, because of the following reasons, it helps the business this way, so let's try to reduce cycle time as much as possible for producing software. Okay, that's a change in the incentive, or the, you know, the definition of success, rather than just telling somebody you have to do DevOps, you know, read a book and figure it out. Ula Ojiaku:  So, what other books because you mentioned the Engineers of Victory, are there any other books you would recommend for the listener to go check out if they wanted to learn more about what we've talked about today? Mark Schwartz:  Well, I think, you know, obviously, my books referred to War and Peace by Tolstoy, Moby Dick, another great one. You know, you probably need to read my books to figure out why those are the right books to read and Engineers of Victory. As I said, I think that one's a great one. Within the field, there are some DevOps books that that I like a lot, of course, Gene Kim's books, The Phoenix Project, and now The Unicorn Project, the sequel to that. Because those are books that give you a feel for the motivation behind all the things that we do. The Mechanics of Things, there are plenty of books out there that help you learn the mechanics of how to do continuous integration and continuous delivery. And then the cloud is I think it's really transformative. You know, it's the cloud itself is a tremendous enabler. I work at AWS, of course but I'm not saying this because I work at AWS, it's more than I work at AWS because I believe these things. And my teammates have written some good books on the cloud. Reaching Cloud Velocity, for example, by Jonathan Allen and Thomas Blood is a great one for reading up on how the cloud can be transformative. But my other teammates, Gregor Hope, has written a number of books that are really good, Stephen Orban did A Head in the Cloud. So, I think those are all… should be at the top of people's reading lists. And then, of course, I recommend my books, because they make me laugh, and they might make you laugh, too. Ula Ojiaku:  Definitely made me laugh, but they've also given me things to think about from a new perspective. So, I totally agree. And so, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you? Mark Schwartz:  Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to find me. If you're with a company that is an AWS customer, feel free to talk to your account manager, the sales team from AWS and ask them to put you in touch with me, is another easy way. LinkedIn is kind of where I organize my world from so find me there. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Sounds great. And any final words for the audience or for the listeners. Mark Schwartz:  Um, I, I have found that these things that you want to do to take advantage of the digital world, and I think we're all sort of pointing ourselves in that direction, there are these amazing things you can do in the digital world. They're sometimes challenging to get there, but it's very possible to get there. And one thing I've learned a lot at Amazon is the idea of working backwards, you know, you get that picture in your head for where you want to be and then you say to yourself, ‘I can get there. Let me work backwards and figure out what I have to do in order to get there.' And you might be wrong, you know, you should test hypotheses, you start moving in the right direction, and of course, correct as you need to. But you can do it with confidence that others are doing it and you can too no matter what your organization is, no matter how much you think you're a snowflake and you know different from every other organization. You can still do it. And with just some good intention and good thinking you can figure out how to how to get there. Ula Ojiaku:  Thank you so much, Mark. That was a great close for this conversation and again, I really appreciate your making the time for this interview. Thank you. Mark Schwartz: Thanks for having me. Ula Ojiaku: You're welcome.  

Should we look beyond technology organizations to learn essential lessons on how to innovate and run successful, complex technology organizations? Gene Kim believes so and contains unbridled curiosity for transformation across industries, as seen in his most recent book Wiring the Winning Organization. Gene Kim returns to share new lessons in change-making for leaders and companies tackling an array of challenges. Gene Kim is a bestselling author of several books on technology innovation, DevOps, and organizational strategy. He founded and served as CTO of Tripwire for thirteen years, an enterprise security software company, and is the founder of IT Revolution. Gene offers an engineering perspective with an executive-eye view. In this episode, Gene discusses being inspired by Toyota and his goal to lead great organizations toward the most effective, liberated problem-solving capabilities. He shares how coordination is the layer that is the difference-maker in a successful company and offers several case studies across industries. Gene highlights three key factors in a cohesive organization: 1) independence of action, 2) time (for practice and planning, and experimentation and implementation), and 3) actionable feedback that reaches the right people at the right time. Gene offers a metaphor from his book—moving a couch—that exemplifies his experience in communication and coordination. With this simple metaphor, Gene shares how small, cross-functional teams with the right number of collaborators are a great tool for success. Join Gene in Las Vegas from August 20 to 22, 2024, at the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit (formerly DevOps Enterprise Summit). (01:40) – Gene Kim returns(04:22) – Layer three as difference-maker(09:22) – Healthcare case studies(11:55) – Three mechanisms for a cohesion(15:04) – The CheckBox Project(20:29) – “Slowification”(26:55) – “Great in the large, great in the small”(29:03) – Specialization of roles and coordination(34:34) – The technology leader's bossGene Kim is an author, researcher, and technology leader studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. Gene founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of Tripwire, Inc. for thirteen years, an enterprise security software company. He is the WSJ bestselling author of Wiring the Winning Organization, The Unicorn Project, and co-author of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and the Shingo Publication Award-winning Accelerate. Since 2014, he has organized the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit (formerly DevOps Enterprise Summit), studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to Innovation and the Digital Enterprise in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If

Julie Pitta and Jeremy Mack are part of the Phoenix Project, which is tracking the wealthy wannabe overlords of the Bay. They run down dossiers of five extremely rich dudes who want to run local politics: Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, Chris Larsen, John Kilroy, Jr., and Garry Tan. Phoenix Project - request the Phoenix Papers: Volume 2 Episodes mentioned:  "VCs vs. SF" f/ Julie Pitta  "Michael Shellenberger Thinks He Knows Your Gender" f/ Soleil Ho "Stop Garry Tan to Stop Asian Hate" f/ Emily Mills

Today I'm talking to Gene Kim. Over the years Gene's work has had a huge influence on me. From books he authored and co-authored including The Unicorn Project, Phoenix Project, DevOps Handbook, and Accelerate, to his advocacy and community building with the DevOps Enterprise Summit, now called the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. I recently finished reading Gene's latest book Wiring the Winning Organization which he co-wrote with Steven Spear. The themes of slowification, simplification, and amplification have already started to seep into my day-to-day conversations. The book is filled with case studies, but also creative metaphors like Gene and Steven moving a couch, which is where our chat starts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cutlefish.substack.com

“What are the right ways that we can change that organizational wiring so that people can actually do work easily and well? That's really the goal and if you can make that happen, that is the key to high performance.” In this episode, Adam talks to Gene Kim, author of The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, researcher, DevOps enthusiast, and founder of IT Revolution. The two discuss topics including the concept of the danger zone and the winning zone in organizations, the challenges and consequences of poor leadership on individuals and the broader organization, and the importance of codifying and sharing knowledge to drive positive change. Gene also shares his journey in the world of technology, what motivates him, and his advice for the SAFe community. Like what you hear? Connect with Gene on LinkedIn. Explore SAFe courses here.

Mike Lyons: Slipping Back, When Agile Teams Drift Back Toward Waterfall Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. Mike shares a story from his time with a team that inadvertently started adopting waterfall practices despite beginning with Agile intentions. How did the introduction of a business analyst role lead to a disconnect between the team and their product owner, and what does this signify about the delicate balance of roles within Agile teams? Learn from Mike's retrospective insights on maintaining Agile principles and the importance of quick feedback cycles. Featured Book of the Week: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim In this segment, Mike describes why the "The Phoenix Project," a business novel resonates so much with scrum masters and Agile practitioners. Why does Mike find himself returning to this book time and again, and how does it mirror the realities of DevOps and Agile environments? Explore how the narrative's emphasis on improving daily work over performing it can revolutionize your approach to Agile project management.   [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!     About Mike Lyons After reading the Agile Manifesto in 2006, Mike focused on making teams and organizations more adaptive and efficient. Despite facing failures and mistakes, these experiences provided him with valuable lessons that enhanced his ability to achieve tangible results with Agile. You can link with Mike Lyons on LinkedIn.

What will the future bring to the workplace — and more importantly, how can organizations start adapting now? It's pretty clear by now that the way of working is changing rapidly. The eruption of generative AI greatly impacted how we see work, and its potential is enormous. There seems to be no limit to what it can do — and that's both exciting and frightening. But regardless of how we feel about it, there's a unifying thought popping into every leader's mind, "If we don't know how this will evolve, how can I prepare for it?" Gene Kim, author of "Wiring The Winning Organization," is here to help. In this webinar, he'll discuss, along with host Matt Beran, several ideas to wire your teams in a way flexible enough to adapt to the speed of change. In addition, they will explore multiple options to leverage automation and AI to build efficient IT services today. So, come join Gene and Matt in this webinar — and get a free AI tools map for service and support! Webinar topics: - Where we stand, and where the IT industry is heading. - How companies are working towards adaptability. - What the greatest organizations are doing TODAY to prepare for tomorrow. - The role of automation and AI in the future workplace. - How to create management systems that liberate people's minds. For the past 25 years, Gene Kim has been studying high-performing technology organizations. He is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher, and multiple award-winning CTO. He founded Tripwire, Inc. and acted as its CTO for 13 years. Some of his most famous books include "Wiring the Winning Organization," "The Unicorn Project," "The DevOps Handbook," and "The Phoenix Project."

Our conversation today featured Kristen Gregg and Aliyha Gill from Phoenix Project to give details about several upcoming events. April is both Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month. Kristen and Aaliyah talk about the importance of volunteers and upcoming events such as their Mother's Day gift basket raffle and their 10th-anniversary celebration. Aaliyah explains her role as a sexual assault advocate and the services provided by Phoenix Project. The pair also touch on educational initiatives, events, and campaigns related to sexual violence awareness, healthy relationships, and consent. To learn more about Phoenix Project and access their services, visit their website: https://phoenix-project.org/ 

I have my theories on why W. Edwards Deming is not a household name in 'all' business circles. Many view him as the 'quality' guy who had an impact on Japanese manufacturing after the second world war.That view is limiting as Deming's management mindset was complete with four central tenets:PragmatismThe Law of VariationHuman psychologySystems ThinkingI used to recommend Mary Walton's book to start learning about Deming. That book gave way to a new title by Edward Martin Baker. After meeting and interviewing Gene Kim a few months ago, I now have a favorite book on Deming by John Willis. The title is Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge. John was one of the earliest cloud evangelists and is considered one of the founders of the DevOps movement. John is the author of 7 IBM Redbooks. He is also the co-author of the “DevOps Handbook” and “Beyond the Phoenix Project” along with author Gene Kim.During this conversation, we talk about Deming's influences to how he became such a complete thinker in helping others to improve.

In our continuation of our coverage on the Philadelphia Experiment and the surrounding mysteries we talk about the Montauk Project also known as the Phoenix Project. A bizarre and twisted tale of Nazi scientists, government black ops, time travel, mind control, and alien encounters.In 1992 Preston Nichols and Peter Moon released the book “The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time” which includes the familiar characters Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron. But is this incredibly story nothing more than science fiction or is there really an underground base at Montauk Point in New York? Did the government unlock the mysteries of time travel and mind control? Did Stewart Swerdlow really travel back in time to assassinate Jesus Christ?Let's find out! ---------- Support the show and get bonus UNHINGED episodes ----------ROKFIN - https://www.rokfin.com/ConspiracyPilledLOCALS - https://conspiracypilled.locals.com/ODYSEE - https://odysee.com/@conspiracypilled:1 MERCH - https://conspiracypilled.com/collections/allJoin the DISCORD - https://discord.gg/vq2QtU2bUh ---------- SPONSORS ----------NORTH ARROW COFFEE - https://northarrowcoffee.coUse code CONSPIRACY10 to get 10% off your order!HEALTYCELL https://healthycell.comUse code CONSPIRACY for 20% offL&J Turkey Farms https://www.landjturkeyfarms.com/Pasture to plate turkey that is GMO free! Conspiracy Pilled Links – https://solo.to/conspiracypilled ------- FOLLOW THE HOSTS ------- Abby – https://solo.to/abbylibbyPJ – https://solo.to/pj_unhinged Music by : Drake Campos #timetravel #montauk #mkultra

Join me and special guest Will Stanwix as we uncover the secrets of retrofitting a 300-year-old barn with crushed clay roof tiles for stunning finishes in vibrant hues.Dive deep into the history of a saw pit turned wheelwright's house, exploring artefacts and building techniques from the past. Learn about sustainable construction materials like clay blocks, hempcrete, and wood fibre insulation for eco-friendly and cosy spaces. Don't miss out on this insightful conversation on traditional building methods, woodwork skills, brick-making techniques, and the importance of community collaboration in sustainable construction practice.Clayfest 2024 - https://www.ebuki.co/events/clayfest-2024Will Stanwix website - https://thathempcreteguy.com/James Henderson book - https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/earth-render-art-clay/author/henderson-james/Dick Proenneke - https://www.dickproenneke.com/DickProenneke.htmlHG Mathews - https://www.hgmatthews.com/lime-and-cob/Phoenix Project - https://www.phoenixlewes.com/Ground floors ACAN talk with Will Stanwix and Jeffrey Hart - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG-n-rTFoPY&t=2797sSteico flex wood fibre insulation - https://www.steico.com/en/flexWork aid Chesham - https://workaid.org/the-workaid-shopIndinature Hemp insulation - https://www.indinature.co/John Seymour - The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency : The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers - https://tinyurl.com/3f749zhk Support the show and get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to MOJO: The Meaning of Life and Business. In today's episode, our host, Jennifer Glass, invites guest expert Dylan Evans to demystify the world of online security and personal identity protection. Together, they debunk common misconceptions about internet safety, exploring the real risks individuals face and offering practical measures to mitigate them. From cyber attacks and ransomware to the evolution of the security industry, this episode sheds light on the complexities of online security and provides actionable advice for listeners. Join us as we delve into the topic of internet safety, empowering ourselves with valuable knowledge to safeguard our personal information in the digital era. About my guest: Dylan Evans authentically shares his stories, realizations, and current journeys in business and personal growth. Professionally, he demystifies security and shows business leaders the easy and effective ways to stop internet crime. Connect with Dylan on LinkedIn and on the web at https://simple-salt.com Keywords: online safety, Internet security, cyber attacks, ransomware, breaches, personal data, credit freeze, security industry, IT history, risk aversion, financial protection, credit card fraud, tax return fraud, Simple Salt, data protection, strong passwords, password managers, phishing emails, identity protection, website security, LinkedIn, stolen identities, phone security, state espionage, Eastern Europe crime, email providers, phishing attempts, vulnerability, security breaches, fail fast Key topics: 1. Misconceptions about Online Safety - Misperception of online safety - Risks individuals face - Ineffectiveness of commonly touted security measures - Cyber attacks, ransomware, and breaches affecting large organizations - How individuals are not directly impacted by large-scale incidents - Dismissal of the notion that personal data can enable significant crimes 2. Practical Advice for Personal Protection - Freezing credit as a mitigation strategy - Canceling debit cards and using credit cards for payments - Setting random PINs for added security - Using strong passwords and password managers - Identifying and avoiding phishing emails - Importance of using reputable email providers 3. Evolution of Security Industry and IT Culture - Historical blame in corporate America leading to a culture of defensibility - The influence of "The Phoenix Project" in transforming IT industries and security teams - Encouraging a culture less afraid of failure 4. Protecting Personal Identity - Significance of security and financial protection on the internet - Risks such as credit card fraud and tax return fraud - Criminal activities involving buying and selling stolen identities - Enhancements in secure phone systems to prevent state espionage - The supply chain of stealing and selling information 5. Cybersecurity Measures and Recommendations - Use of credit cards for payments and freezing credit - Protecting against phishing attempts with reputable email providers - Advantages of using password managers - Recognizing vulnerability and guarding against low moments 6. Contact Information and Company Spotlight - Simple Salt, a company aiming to demystify data protection - Assisting businesses in evaluating protective options against traditional tech solutions - Contact information for Simple Salt: simplesalt.com 7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts - Encouraging viewers to connect with Dylan through website and LinkedIn - Emphasizing the importance of using strong passwords and password managers

How can leaders wire their organizations to win? Gene Kim explains that work consists of three layers - the objects we work on, the tools we use, and the social connections between people. Successful leaders focus on this third "social circuitry" layer to integrate functions, remove barriers, create independence between teams, amplify weak signals of failure, and practice "slowification" - strategically slowing down to speed up long-term results. He also introduces two other principles - "simplification" and "amplification." Simplification involves breaking down complex problems into manageable parts, while amplification focuses on creating a management system that ensures even the weakest signals of failure are detected and addressed early. Meet Gene Gene's Story: Gene Kim is the co-author of several influential books, including The Unicorn Project, The Phoenix Project, and The DevOps Handbook. His latest book is Wiring the Winning Organization. Gene was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc for 13 years, an enterprise security software company. In 2014, he launched DevOps Enterprise Summit, an annual event that has attracted over 10,000 technology leaders to date. He has spoken at over 100 companies and conferences, including Apple, Target, IBM, Nike, Principal Financial, lululemon, and Microsoft. His books have sold over 1 million copies. https://itrevolution.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realgenekim/   Book Recommendations Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification by Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear  Examining the shareholder wealth effects of announcements of newly created CIO positions by Dr. Vernon J Richardson  Like this? Creating Dream Teams with Mike Zani Nurturing a Team That Flourishes with Dan Pontefract The Science of High Performance Teams with Dr. David Burkus Join Our Community If you want to view our live podcast episodes, hear about new releases, or chat with others who enjoy this podcast join one of our communities below. Join the Facebook Group Join the LinkedIn Group   Leave a Review If you liked this conversation, we'd be thrilled if you'd let others know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Here's a quick guide for posting a review. Review on Apple: https://remarkablepodcast.com/itunes    Podcast Better! Sign up with Libsyn and get up to 2 months free! Use promo code: RLP  

GrowSF, TogetherSF and other benign-sounding local political organizations are more rightwing innovations from rich tech barons like David Sacks and Michael Moritz. Julie Pitta, a journalist previously at the LA Times, Forbes, and the SF Richmond Review, talks about the newly launched Phoenix Project, which looks at how dark money flows in California politics. (FYI: The conversation with Julie was recorded in early February, shortly after Garry "Die Slow" Tan's drunken appropriation of Tupac lyrics calling for the death of a bunch of local politicians, and just before a rightwing trolling campaign convinced the Richmond Review's publisher to abruptly end Julie's column there.) The Phoenix Project 'Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics' (Julie Pitta in the Richmond Review) 'The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco' (Gil Duran in the New Republic) Our Garry Tan episode (f/ Emily Mills) Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Please support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.

In the Phoenix Project (worth a read), there is a character called Brent, who is to go-to person for everything in IT. I don't know if this character was modeled after Brent Ozar, but I always picture him when I re-read the book, and I suspect he was that person in previous positions. I've been that person as well, and it's both exciting, fulfilling, and very stressful. At Redgate, that person has been Robert C, who is my go-to person for many questions. In the DBA world, I think of Jeff Moden. He's been a prolific and incredible author over the years on many things SQL-related and is a huge proponent of others learning to write better code and better utilize the database platform more efficiently. I suspect in his company, he is the go-to person for most database-related questions and problems. I also suspect he solves most of them very well and has the influence (or power) to effect change. Read the rest of Do You Have a Jeff?

Ever hear of the Phoenix Project? Ever hear of the Manhattan Project? ever hear of the Montauk Project? Chances are you have, but you don't fully understand what they REALLY were. We are going to take a DEEP dive in to them and get insight to our connect to Alien technology, government coverups, and the names connected with these projects that you wont believe! NOTICE Since the release of this episode, I'm unable to find any of the video sources i've mentioned in this episode. I am unclear why, but we will continue to scour the internet. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thebizarreaf/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thebizarreaf/support

Gene Kim (@RealGeneKim, Author, Organizational Operations Researcher) talks about the challenges of organizing a team, group, or company to be successful in simple and complex tasks. SHOW: 789CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwNEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:Learn More About Azure Offerings : Learn more about Azure Migrate and Modernize & Azure Innovate!Azure Free Cloud Resource Kit : Step-by-step guidance, resources and expert advice, from migration to innovation.CloudZero – Cloud Cost Visibility and Savings​​CloudZero provides immediate and ongoing savings with 100% visibility into your total cloud spendSHOW NOTES:Wiring the Winning Organization (book) (w/ Steven Spear)The Unicorn Project (homepage)The Unicorn Project (resource guide)The Unicorn Project on The Cloudcast (Eps. 433)The Phoenix Project on The Cloudcast (Eps.79)The DevOps HandbookDevOps Enterprise Summit (event)Topic 1 - Welcome back. It's been way too long. What have you been up to lately? Tell us a little bit about your co-author and where the research for this book came from.Topic 2 - This is a different type of book than The Phoenix Project or Unicorn Project, in that it seems more about managerial structure and research than the inspirational story-telling of past books. Is this addressing a different audience, or you felt that it needed a different framework to make the biggest impact? Topic 3 - At the core of the book are three concepts, amplification (where are the problems) which results in slowificaion (create space for problem solving) and simplification (make problems themselves easier to solve). Walk us through each of these. Topic 4 - As I was reading this book, the thing that jumped out at me the most was the importance of alignment between problem scope, how teams or individuals were aligned, and how much flexibility could be given to different parts of the problem/solution. Topic 5 - The Phoenix and Unicorn Projects inspired a generation of IT professionals to be the champion of the change in their organization. What feedback have you gotten from the readers of Wiring the Winning Organization so far? Topic 6 - These days everyone wants learnings to be quick and with immediate results. Is there a TikTok version of the learnings from this book that anyone could use immediately? FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter: @cloudcastpodInstagram: @cloudcastpodTikTok: @cloudcastpod

Season 4 kicks off with a conversation with Gene Kim, author of several renowned books, including "The Phoenix Project," "The DevOps Handbook," and most recently, "Wiring the Winning Organization." In this episode, Gene candidly shares the trials behind writing what he considers one of his most challenging books, why it was a joy to partner with Steven Spear as a co-author, and the key principles needed for creating high-performing teams.Illustrating these ideas, Gene and Conor draw on examples from diverse realms, including the intricacies of software development, the complexities of healthcare, the socio-technical system behind Amazon's success, and everyday tasks like moving a couch. Note: This conversation is a follow-up to last year's episode with Steven Spear. You can listen to Steven's episode here. Show Notes:Order your copy today: Wiring The Winning OrganizationGet your free DORA dashboard: DORA Metrics. 100% Free. Forever.Support the show: Subscribe to our Substack Leave us a review Subscribe on YouTube Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn Offers: Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream Get your DORA Metrics free forever

Phoenix Project author, Gene Kim, is back on Troubleshooting Agile to discuss the groundbreaking theories of organizational management described in his new book, Wiring the Winning Organization. In this episode (part three of three), Gene discusses how and why you should be "simplifying” and “amplifying" in your DevOps team. Links: - Wiring the Winning Organization: https://itrevolution.com/product/wiring-the-winning-organization/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realgenekim/ - Steve Yegge Amazon Platform Rant: https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 - Investments Unlimited: https://itrevolution.com/product/investments-unlimited/ - Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem - High Output Management: https://bookshop.org/p/books/high-output-management-andrew-s-grove/6730629 - Ratio (cookbook) https://bookshop.org/p/books/ratio-the-simple-codes-behind-the-craft-of-everyday-cooking-michael-ruhlman/8881759 -------------------------------------------------- About Our Guest Gene Kim is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher, and multiple award-winning CTO. He has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999 and was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He is the author of six books, The Unicorn Project (2019), and co-author of the Shingo Publication Award winning Accelerate (2018), The DevOps Handbook (2016), and The Phoenix Project (2013). Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations. -------------------------------------------------- Order your copy of our book, Agile Conversations at agileconversations.com Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building when you join our mailing list. We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com -------------------------------------------------- About Your Hosts Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick first met while working together at TIM group in 2013. A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, keynote speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Dave Mangot, CEO and founder of Mangoteque, joins Coreyon Screaming in the Cloud to explain how leveraging DevOps improves the lives of engineers and results in stronger businesses. Dave talks about the importance of exclusively working for private equity firms that act ethically, the key difference between venture capital and private equity, and how conveying issues and ideas to your CEO using language he understands leads to faster results. Corey and Dave discuss why successful business are built on two things: infrastructure as code and monitoring.About DaveDave Mangot, author of DevOps Patterns for Private Equity, helps portfolio companies get good at delivering software.  He is a leading consultant, author, and speaker as the principal at Mangoteque.  A DevOps veteran, Dave has successfully led digital, SRE, and DevOps transformations at companies such as Salesforce, SolarWinds, and Cable & Wireless. He has a proven track record of working with companies to quickly mature their existing culture to improve the speed, frequency, and resilience of their software service delivery.Links Referenced: Mangoteque: https://www.mangoteque.com DevOps Patterns for Private Equity: https://www.amazon.com/DevOps-Patterns-Private-Equity-organization/dp/B0CHXVDX1K “How to Talk Business: A Short Guide for Tech Leaders”: https://itrevolution.com/articles/how-to-talk-business-a-short-guide-for-tech-leaders/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is someone that I have known for, well, longer than I've been doing this show. Dave Mangot is the founder and CEO at Mangoteque. Dave, thank you for joining me.Dave: Hey, Corey, it's great to be here. Nice to see you again.Corey: I have to say, your last name is Mangot and the name of your company is Mangoteque, spelled M-A-N-G-O-T-E-Q-U-E, if I got that correctly, which apparently I did. What an amazing name for a company. How on earth did you name a company so well?Dave: Yeah, I don't know. I have to think back, a few years ago, I was just getting started in consulting, and I was talking to some friends of mine who were giving me a bunch of advice—because they had been doing consulting for quite some time—about what my rates should be, about all kinds of—you know, which vendors I should work with for my legal advice. And I said, “I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with a name for the company.” And this guy, Corey Quinn, was like, “Hey, I got a name for you.” [laugh].Corey: I like that story, just because it really goes to show the fine friends of mine over at all of the large cloud services companies—but mostly AWS—that it's not that hard to name something well. The trick, I think, is just not to do it in committee.Dave: Yeah. And you know, it was a very small committee obviously of, like, three. But yeah, it's been great. I have a lot of compliments on the name of my company. And I was like, oh, “You know that guy, the QuinnyPig dude?” And they're like, “Yeah?” “Oh, yeah, it was—that was his idea.” And I liked it. And it works really well for the things that I do.Corey: It seems to. So, talk to you about what it is that you do because back when we first met and many, many years ago, you were an SRE manager at a now defunct observability company. This was so long ago, I don't think that they used the term observability. It was Librato, which, “What do you do?” “We do monitoring,” back when that didn't sound like some old-timey thing. Like, “Oh, yeah. Right, between the blacksmith and the cobbler.” But you've evolved significantly since you were doing the mundane, pedestrian tasks of keeping the service up and running. What do you do these days?Dave: Yeah, that was before the observability wars [laugh] [whatever you like 00:02:55] to call it. But over time, that company was owned by SolarWinds and I wound up being responsible for all the SolarWinds cloud company SRE organizations. So, started—ran a global organization there. And they were owned by a couple of private equity firms. And I got to know one of the firms rather well, and then when I left SolarWinds, I started working with private equity firm portfolio companies, especially software investments. And what I like to say is I teach people how to get good at delivering software.Corey: So, you recently wrote a book, and I know this because I make it a point to get a copy of the book—usually by buying it, but you beat me to it by gifting me one—of every guest I have on the show who's written a book. Sometimes that means I wind up with the eclectic collections of poetry, other times, I wind up with a number of different books around the DevOps and cloud space. And one of these days, I'm going to wind up talking to someone who wound up writing an encyclopedia or something, to where I have to back the truck around. But what I wanted to ask is about your title, of all things. It's called DevOps Patterns for Private Equity. And I have to ask, what makes private equity special?Dave: I think as a cloud economist, what you also just told me, is you owe me $17.99 for the book because it was gifted.Corey: Is that how expensive books are these days? My God, I was under the impression once you put the word ‘DevOps' in the title, that meant you're above 40 bucks, just as, you know, entrance starting fees here.Dave: I think I need to talk to my local cloud economist on how to price things. Yeah, the book is about things that I've basically seen at portfolio companies over the years. The thing about, you know, why private equity, I think it would be one question, just because I've been involved in the DevOps movement since pretty much the start, when John Willis calls me a DevOps OG, which I think is a compliment. But the thing that I like about working with private equity, and more specifically, private equity portfolio companies is, like I wrote in the book, they're serious. And serious means that they're not afraid to make a big investment, they're not afraid to change things quickly, they're not afraid to reorganize, or rethink, or whatever because a lot of these private equity firms have, how they describe it as a three to five year investment thesis. So, in three to five years, they want to have some kind of an exit event, which means that they can't just sit around and talk about things and try it and see what happens—Corey: In the fullness of time, 20 years from now. Yeah, it doesn't work that well. But let's back up a little bit here because something that I have noticed over the years is that, especially when it comes to financial institutions, the general level of knowledge is not terrific. For a time, a lot of people were very angry at Goldman Sachs, for example. But okay, fair enough. What does Goldman Sachs do? And the answer was generally incoherent.And again, I am in no way, shape or form, different from people who form angry opinions without having all of the facts. I do that myself three times before breakfast. My last startup was acquired by BlackRock, and I was the one that raised our hand internally, at the 40-person company when that was announced, as everyone was sort of sitting there stunned: “What's a BlackRock?” Because I had no idea. Well, for the next nine months, I assure you, I found out what a BlackRock is. But what is private equity? Because I see a lot of them getting beaten up for destroying companies. Everyone wants to bring up the Toys-R-Us story as a for instance. But I don't get the sense that that is the full picture. Tell me more.Dave: Yes. So, I'm probably not the best spokesperson for private equity. But—Corey: Because you don't work for a private equity firm, you only work with them, that makes you a terrific spokesperson because you're not [in 00:06:53] this position of, “Well, justify what your company does here,” situation, there's something to be said for objectivity.Dave: So, you know, like I wrote in the book, there are approximately 10,000 private equity firms in the United States. They are not all going to be ethical. That is just not a thing. I choose to work with a specific segment of private equity companies, and these private equity companies want to make a good business. That's what they're going for.And you and I, having had worked at many companies in our careers, know that there's a lot of companies out there that aren't a good business. You're like, “Why are we doing this? This doesn't make any sense. This isn't a good investment. This”—there's a lot of things and what I would call the professional level private equity firms, the ones at the top—and not all of them at the top are ethical, don't get me wrong; I have a blacklist here of companies I won't work for. I will not say who those companies are.Corey: I am in the same boat. I think that anyone who works in an industry at all and doesn't have a list of companies that they would not do business with, is, on some level, either haven't thought it through, hasn't been in business long enough, or frankly, as long as you're paying them, everything you can do is a-okay. And you know, I'm not going to sit here and say that those are terrible people, but I never wanted to do that soul-searching. I always thought the only way to really figure out where you stand is to figure it out in advance before there's money on the table. Like, do you want to go do contracting for a defense company? Well no, objectively, I don't, but that's a lot harder to say when they're sitting on the table with $20 million in front of you of, “Do you want to work with a defense company?” Because you can rationalize your way into anything when the stakes are high enough. That's where I've always stood on it. But please, continue.Dave: I'd love to be in that situation to turn down $20 million [laugh].Corey: Yeah, that's a hard situation to find yourself in, right?Dave: But regardless, there's a lot of different kinds of private equity firms. Generally the firms that I work with, they all want—not generally; the ones I work with want to make better companies. I have had operating partners at these companies tell me—because this always comes up with private equity—there's no way to cut your way to a good company. So, the private equity firms that I work with invest in these companies. Do they sell off unprofitable things? Of course they do. Do they try to streamline some things sometimes so that the company is only focused on X or Y, and then they tuck other companies into it—that's called a buy and build strategy or a platform strategy—yes. But the purpose of that is to make a better company.The thing that I see a lot of people in our industry—meaning, like, us tech kind of folks—get confused about is what the difference is between venture capital and private equity. And private equity, in general, is the thing that is the kind of financing that follows on after venture capital. So, in venture capital, you are trying to find product-market fit. The venture capitalists are putting all their bets down like they're in Vegas at re:Invent, and trying to figure out which bet is going to pay off, but they have no expectation that all of the bets are going to pay off. With private equity, the companies have product-market fit, they're profitable. If they're not profitable, they have a very clear line to profitability.And so, what these private equity firms are trying to do, no matter what the size of the company is, whether it's a 50-person company or a 5000-person company, they're trying to get these companies up to another level so that they're more profitable and more valuable, so that either a larger fish will gobble them up or they'll go out on the public markets, like onto the stock market, those kinds of things, but they're trying to make a company that's more valuable. And so, not everything looks so good [laugh] when you're looking at it from the outside, not understanding what these people are trying to do. That's not to say they're not complete jerks who are in private equity because there are.Corey: Because some parts are missing. Kidding. Kidding. Kidding.Dave: [laugh].Corey: It's a nuanced area, and it's complicated, just from the perspective of… finance is deceptively complicated. It looks simple, on some level, because on some level, you can always participate in finance. I have $10. I want to buy a thing that costs $7. How does that work? But it gets geometrically more complex the further you go. Financial engineering is very much a thing.And it is not at all obvious how those things interplay with different dynamics. One of the private equity outcomes, as you alluded to a few minutes ago, is the idea that they need to be able to rapidly effect change. It becomes a fast turnaround situation, and then have an exit event of some kind. So, the DevOps patterns that you write about are aligned with an idea of being effective, presumably, rather than, well, here's how you slowly introduce a sweeping cultural mindset shift across the organization. Like, that's great, but some of us don't have that kind of runway for what we're trying to achieve to be able to pull that off. So, I'm assuming that a lot of the patterns you talk about are emphasizing rapid results.Dave: Well, I think the best way to describe this, right, is what we've talked about is they want to make a better company. And for those of us who have worked in the DevOps movement for all these years, what's one great way of making a better company? Adopting DevOps principles, right? And so, for me, one of the things I love about my job is I get to go in and make engineers' lives better. No more working on weekends, no more we're only going to do deployments at 11 o'clock at night, no more we're going to batch things up and ship them three or four times a year, which all of us who've done DevOps stuff for years know, like, fastest way to have a catastrophe is batch up as many things as possible and release them all at once.So like, for me, I'm going in making engineers' lives better. When their lives are better, they produce better results because they're not stressed out, they're not burned out, they get to spend time with their families, all those kinds of things. When they start producing better results, the executives are happier. The executives can go to the investors and show all the great results they're getting, so the investors are happier. So, for me, I always say, like, I'm super lucky because I have a job that's win, win, win.And like, I'm helping them to make a better company, I'm helping them to ship faster, I'm helping them do things in the cloud, I'm helping them get more reliability, which helps them retain customers, all these things. Because we know from the—you know, remember the 2019 State of DevOps Report: highest performers are twice as likely to meet or exceed their organization's performance goals, and those can be customer retention, revenue, whatever those goals are. And so, I get to go in and help make a better company because I'm making people's lives better and, kind of, everybody wins. And so, for me, it's super rewarding.Corey: That's a good way of framing it. I have to ask, since the goal for private equity, as you said, is to create better companies, to effectively fix a bunch of things that, for better or worse, had not been working optimally. Let me ask the big, dumb, naive question here. Isn't that ostensibly the goal of every company? Now, everyone says it's their goal, but whether that is their goal or not, I think, is a somewhat separate question.Dave: Yeah. I—that should be the goal of every company, I agree. There are people who read my book and said, “Hey, this stuff applies far beyond private equity.” And I say, “Yeah, it absolutely does.” But there are constraints—[gold rat 00:15:10]—within private equity, about the timing, about the funding, about whatever, to get the thing to another level. And that's an interesting thing that I've seen is I've seen private equity companies take a company up to another level, have some kind of exit event, and then buy that company again years later. Which, like, what? Like, how could that be?Corey: I've seen that myself. It feels, on some level, like that company goes public, and then goes private, then goes public, then goes private to the same PE firm, and it's like, are you really a PE company or are you just secretly a giant cat, perpetually on the wrong side of a door somewhere?Dave: But that's because they will take it to a level, the company does things, things happen out in the market, and then they see another opportunity to grow them again. Where in a regular company—in theory—you're going to want to just get better all the time, forever. This is the Toyota thesis about continual improvement.Corey: I am curious as far as what you are seeing changing in the market with the current macroeconomic conditions, which is a polite way to say the industry going wonky after ten years of being relatively up and to the right.Dave: Yeah, well, I guess the fun thing is, we have interest rates, we had a pandemic, we had [laugh], like, all this exciting stuff. There's, you know, massive layoffs, [unintelligible 00:16:34] and then all this, kind of like, super churn-y things. I think the fun thing for me is, I went to a private equity conference in San Francisco, I don't know, a month ago or something like that, and they had all these panelists on stage pontificating about this and that and the other thing, and one of the women said something that I thought was really great, especially for someone like me. She said, “The next five to ten years in private equity are going to be about growth and operational efficiency.” And I was like, “That's DevOps. That's awesome.” [laugh].That really works well for me because, like, we want to have people twice as likely to meet or exceed their organization's performance goals. That's growth. And we want operational efficiency, right? Like, stop manually copying files around, start putting stuff in containers, do all these things that enable us to go fast speed and also do that with high quality. So, if the next five to ten years are going to be about growth and operational efficiency, I think it's a great opportunity for people to take in a lot of these DevOps principles.And so, the being on the Screaming in the Cloud podcast, like, I think cloud is a huge part of that. I think that's a big way to get growth and operational efficiency. Like, how better to be able to scale? How better to be able to Deming's PDSA cycle, right—Plan, Do, Study, Act—how better to run all these experiments to find out, like, how to get better, how to be more efficient, how to meet our customers' demands. I think that's a huge part of it.Corey: That is, I think, a very common sentiment as far as how folks are looking at things from a bigger picture these days. I want to go back as well to something you said earlier that I was joking around at the start of the episode about, “Wow, what an amazing name for the company. How did you come up with it?” And you mentioned that you had been asking a bunch of people for advice—or rather, you mentioned you had gotten advice from people. I want to clarify, you were in fact asking. I wasn't basically the human form of Clippy popping up, “It looks like you're starting a business. Let me give you unsolicited advice on what you should be doing.”What you've done, I think, is a terrific example of the do what I say not what I do type of problem, where you have focused on your positioning on a specific segment of the market: private equity firms and their portfolio companies. If I had been a little bit smarter, I would have done something similar in my own business. I would fix AWS bills for insurance companies in the Pacific Northwest or something like that, where people can hear the type of company they are reflected in the name of what it is that you do. I was just fortunate enough or foolish enough to be noisy enough in order to talk about what I do in a way that I was able to overcome that. But targeting the way that you have, I think is just so spot on. And it's clearly working out for you.Dave: I think a Corey Quinn Clippy would be very distracting in [laugh] my Microsoft Word, first of all [laugh]. Second of all—Corey: They're calling it Copilot now.Dave: [laugh]—there's this guy Corey and his partner Mike who turned me on to this guy, Jonathan Stark, who has his theory about your business. He calls it, like, elucidating, like, a Rolodex moment. So, if somebody's talking about X or Y, and they say, “Oh, yeah. You want to talk to Corey about that.” Or, “You want to talk to Mike about that.”And so, for me, working with private equity portfolio companies, that's a Rolodex moment. When people are like, “I'm at a portfolio company. We just got bought. They're coming in, and they want to understand what our spend is on the cloud, and this and that. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here.” A lot of times people think of me because I tend to work on those kinds of problems. And so, it doesn't mean I can't work on other things, and I definitely do work on other things, I've definitely worked with companies that are not owned by private equity, but for me, that's really a place that I enjoy working, and thankfully, I get Rolodex moments from those things.Corey: That's the real value that I've found. The line I've heard is always it's not just someone at a party popping up and saying, “Oh, yeah, I have that problem.” But, “Oh, my God, you need to talk to this person I know who has that problem.” It's the introduction moment. In my case at least, it became very hard for me to find people self-identifying as having large AWS bills, just because, yeah, individual learners or small startup founders, for example, might talk about it here and there, but large companies do not tend to complain about that in Twitter because that tends to, you know, get them removed from their roles when they start going down that path. Do you find that it is easier for you to target what you do to people because it's easier to identify them in public? Because I assure you, someone with a big AWS bill is hard to spot out of a crowd.Dave: Well, I think you need to meet people where they are, I think is probably the best way of saying that. So, if you are—and this isn't something I need to explain to you, obviously, so this is more for your listeners, but like, if you're going to talk about, “Hey, I'm looking for companies with large AWS bills,” [pthhh] like that's, maybe kind of whatever. But if you say, “Hey, I want to improve your margins and your operational efficiencies,” all of a sudden, you're starting to speak their language, right? And that language is where people start to understand that, “Hey, Corey's talking about me.”Corey: A large part of how I talk about this was shaped by some of the early conversations I had. The way that I think about this stuff and the way that I talk is not necessarily what terms my customers use. Something that I found that absolutely changed my approach was having an investigative journalist—or a former investigative journalist, in this case—interview people I'd worked with to get case studies and testimonials from them. But what she would also do was get the exact phrasing that they use to describe the value that I did, and how they talked about what we'd done. Because that became something that was oh, you're effectively writing the rough draft of my marketing copy when you do that. Speaking in the language of your customer is so important, and I meet a lot of early-stage startups that haven't quite unlocked that bit of insight yet.Dave: And I think looking at that from a slightly different perspective is also super important. So, not only speaking the language of your customer, but let's say you're not a consultant like me or you. Let's say you work inside of a company. You need to learn to speak the language of business, right? And this is, like, something I wrote about in the beginning of the book about the guy in San Francisco who got locked up for not giving away the Cisco passwords, and Gavin Newsom had to go to his jail cell and all this other crazy stuff that happened is, technologists often think that the reason that they go to work is to play with technology. The reason we go to work is to enable the business.And—so shameless plug here I—wrote a paper that came out, like, two months ago with IT Revolution—so the people who do The Phoenix Project, and Accelerate, and The DevOps Handbook, and all that other stuff, I wrote this paper with, like, Courtney Kissler, and Paul Gaffney, and Scott Nasello, and a whole bunch of amazing technologists, but it's about speaking the language of business. And as technologists, if we want to really contribute and feel like the work that we're doing is contributing and valuable, you need to start understanding how those other people are talking. So, you and I were just talking about, like, operational efficiencies, and margins, and whatever. What is all that stuff? And figuring that out and being able to have that conversation with your CEO or whoever, those are the things that get people to understand exactly what you're trying to do, and what you're doing, and why this thing is so important.I talk to so many engineers that are like, “Ah, I talked to management and they just don't understand, and [da-dah].” Yeah, they don't understand because you're speaking technology language. They don't want to hear about, like, CNCF compliant this, that, and the—that doesn't mean anything to them. You need to understand in their lang—talk to them and their language and say like, “Hey, this is why this is good for the business.” And I think that's a really important thing for people to start to learn.Corey: So, a question that I have, given that you have been doing this stuff, I think, longer than I have, back when cloud wasn't really a thing, and then it was a thing, but it seemed really irresponsible to do. And then it went through several more iterations to the point where now it's everywhere. What's your philosophy of cloud?Dave: So, I'll go back to something that just came out, the 2023 State of DevOps Report just came out. I follow those things pretty closely. One of the things they talked about in the paper is one of the key differentiators to get your business to have what they call high organizational performance—again, this [laugh] is going back to business talk again—is what they call infrastructure flexibility. And I just don't think you can get infrastructure flexibility if you're not in the cloud. Can you do it? Absolutely.You know, back over a decade ago, I built out a bunch of stuff in a data center on what I called cloud principles. We could shoot things in the head, get new ones back, we did all kinds of things, we identified SKUs of, like, what kind of classes of machines we had. All that looks like a lot of stuff that you would just do in AWS, right? Like, I know, my C instances are compute. I know my M instances are memory. Like, they're all just SKUs, right?Corey: Yeah, that changed a little bit now to the point where they have so many different instance families that some of their names look like dumps of their firmware.Dave: [laugh]. That is probably true. But like, this idea that, like, I want to have this infrastructure flexibility isn't just my idea that it's going to turn out well. Like, the State of DevOps Report kind of proves it. And so, for me, like, I go back to some of the principles of the DevOps movement, and like, if you look at the DORA metrics, let's say you've got deployment frequency and lead time for changes. That's speed: how fast can I do something? And you've got time-to-recover, and you've got change failure rate. That's quality: how much can I ship without having problems, and how fast can I recover when I do?And I think this is one of the things I teach to a lot of my clients about moving into the cloud. If you want to be successful, you have to deliver with speed and quality. Speed: Infrastructure as Code, full stop. If I want to be able to go fast, I need to be able to destroy an environment, bring a new environment up, I need to be able to do that in minutes. That's speed.And then the second requirement, and the only other requirement, is build monitoring in from the start. Everything gets monitored. And that's quality. Like, if I monitor stuff, I know when I've deployed something that's spiking CPU. If that's monitored, I know that this thing is costing me a hell of a lot more than other things. I know all this stuff. And I can do capacity planning, I can do whatever the heck I want. But those are the two fundamental things: Infrastructure as Code and monitoring.And yes, like you said, I worked at a monitoring or observability company, so perhaps I'm slightly biased, but what I've seen is, like, companies that adopt those two principles, and everything else comes from that—so all my Kubernetes stuff and all those other things are not at odds with those principles—those are the people who actually wind up doing really well. And I think those are the people that have—State of DevOps Report—infrastructure flexibility, and that enables them to have higher organizational performance.Corey: I think you're onto something. Like, I still remember the days of having to figure out the number of people who you had in your ops team versus how many servers they could safely and reasonably run. And now that question has little, if any, meaning. If someone asked me, “Okay, so we're running right now 10,000 instances in our cloud environment. How many admins should it take us to run those?” The correct response is, “How the heck are you running those things?” Like, tell me more because the answer is probably terrifying. Because right now, if you do that correctly, it's you want to make a change to all of them or some subset of them? You change a parameter somewhere and computers do the heavy lifting.Dave: Yeah, I ran a content delivery network for cable and wireless. We had three types of machines. You know, it was like Windows Media Server and some squid-cache thing or whatever. And it didn't matter how many we had. It's all the same. Like, if I had 10,000 and I had 50,000, it's irrelevant. Like, they're all the same kind of crap. It's not that hard to manage a bunch of stuff that's all the same.If I have 10,000 servers and each one is a unique, special snowflake because I'm running in what I call a hosted configuration, I have 10,000 customers, therefore I have 10,000 servers, and each of them is completely different than the other, then that's going to be a hell of a lot harder to manage than 10,000 things that the load balancer is like [bbbrrrp bbbrrrp] [laugh] like, just lay it out. So, it's sort of a… kind of a nonsense question at this point. Like you're saying, like, it doesn't really matter how many. It's complexity. How much complexity do I have? And as we all say, in the DevOps movement, complexity isn't free. Which I'll bet is a large component of how you save companies money with The Duckbill Group.Corey: It goes even beyond that because cloud infrastructure is always less expensive than the people working on it, unless you do something terrifying. Otherwise, everything should be running an EC2 instances. Nothing higher-level built on top of it because if people's time is free, the cheapest thing you're going to get is a bunch of instances. The end. That is not really how you should be thinking about this.Dave: [laugh]. I know a lot of private equity firms that would love to find a place where time was free [laugh]. They could make a lot of money.Corey: Yeah. Pretty sure that the biggest—like, “What's your biggest competitive headwind?” You know [laugh], “Wage laws.” Like it doesn't work that way. I'm sorry, but it doesn't [laugh].I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me about what you're up to, how things are going over in your part of the universe. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to go to find you?Dave: They can go to mangoteque.com. I've got all the links to my blog, my mailing list. Definitely, if you're interested in this intersection of DevOps and private equity, sign up for the mailing list. For people who didn't get Corey's funky spelling of my last name, it is a play on the fact that it is French and I also work with technology companies. So, it's M-A-N-G-O-T-E-Q-U-E dot com.If you type that in—Mangoteque—to any search engine, obviously, you will find me. I am not difficult to find on the internet because I've been doing this for quite some time. But thank you for having me on the show. It's always great to catch up with you. I love hearing about what you're doing. I super appreciate you're asking me about the things that I'm working on, and you know, been a big help.Corey: No, it's deeply fascinating. It's neat to watch you continue to meet your market in a variety of different ways. Dave Mangot, CEO and founder of Mangoteque, which is excellently named. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this episode, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment almost certainly filled with incoherent screaming because you tuned out just as soon as you heard the words ‘private equity.'Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business, and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Phoenix Project author, Gene Kim, is back on Troubleshooting Agile to discuss the groundbreaking theories of organizational management described in his new book, Wiring the Winning Organization. In this episode (part two of three), Gene describes the “Danger Zone”, and the first of three mechanisms for exiting the high-risk zone: Slowification. Links: - Wiring the Winning Organization: https://itrevolution.com/product/wiring-the-winning-organization/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realgenekim/ - The MIT Sailing System: https://videos.itrevolution.com/watch/871558334/ - Look Back Less: https://world.hey.com/jason/look-back-less-848e9db0 -------------------------------------------------- About Our Guest Gene Kim is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher, and multiple award-winning CTO. He has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999 and was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He is the author of six books, The Unicorn Project (2019), and co-author of the Shingo Publication Award winning Accelerate (2018), The DevOps Handbook (2016), and The Phoenix Project (2013). Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations. -------------------------------------------------- Order your copy of our book, Agile Conversations at agileconversations.com Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building when you join our mailing list. We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com -------------------------------------------------- About Your Hosts Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick first met while working together at TIM group in 2013. A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, keynote speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Episode page with video, transcript, and more My guests for Episode #493 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Gene Kim and Steve Spear, co-authors of the new book Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification. Joining us for the first time is Gene Kim, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher who has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999 – He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He is the author of six books, The Unicorn Project (2019), and co-author of the Shingo Publication Award-winning Accelerate (2018), The DevOps Handbook (2016), and The Phoenix Project (2013). Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, (now the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit) studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations. He lives in Portland, OR, with his wife and family. Dr. Steven J. Spear, DBA, MS, MS is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and author of influential publications like the book The High-Velocity Edge, and the HBR articles “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System,” and “Fixing Healthcare from the Inside, Today.”  An advisor to corporate and governmental leaders across a range of fields, he is also the founder of See to Solve, a business process software company. He has a doctorate from Harvard, masters degrees in mechanical engineering and management from MIT, and a bachelor's degree in economics from Princeton.  Steve was previously a guest give times in episodes 58, 87, 262, 358, and 386. Questions, Notes, and Highlights: Gene — what's your “Lean” origin story or however you would frame or label it? Steve — what's a key highlight of your Lean origin story? “The ultimate learning machine” – Toyota Backstory on working together on this book? How many copied 2 pizza teams from Amazon and failed?? What puts some companies in the “danger zone” and how is that detected if it's not obvious? The andon cord was a way to speak up Steve – see, solve, share? A 4th step? See, safe to speak, solve, share? You write about recurring problems in a workplace. How do you think the behavior of managers punishing people for problems gets in the way of solving problems? The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in its 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more. This podcast was also brought to you by Arena, a PTC Business. Arena is the proven market leader in Cloud Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) with over 1,400 customers worldwide. Visit the link arenasolutions.com/lean to learn more about how Arena can help speed product releases with one connected system. This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.   

Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu93zN6Q_ygmzRcIa8elTTw/joinJoseph W. Powell became public to share his experiences & his self-appointed mission to stop the abduction & abuse of children and help wake up as many Fractal Weapons as possible for the current threat to humanity. That is an intersystem battle with various ET and criminal humans/hybrids controlling the factions seeking the continued enslavement & domination of our Planet Terra & this solar system. He was Kidnapped, mind Fractured, trained as a psionic & forced into The Phoenix Project, The Stargate Project, Project IBIS, Solar Warden, Mars Defense Force, Nacht Waffen, Merchant Marine Fleet, Black Manta & other earth units. He served willingly in the Ashtar Galactic Command, not the CIA psyop that most people know of in his own words. When he isn't doing interviews or speaking at public events, he talks with other survivors, helping sort through their memory, or removing blocks on their memories free of charge. You can go to his Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/groups/226672939647830/?ref=share

In this Psychedelic Podcast episode, co-host Joseph Anew speaks with entrepreneur and Phoenix Project founder Dr. Melissa Barker about transcending trauma with psychedelics. Joseph and Dr. Barker explore questions like, Why do traditional therapies fall short of repairing deep wounds? What can psychedelics do for trauma that other modalities can't? How can survivors choose between ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, and other psychedelic medicines? And what role do microdosing and community play in long-term healing? This conversation unveils the trauma-healing trajectory as survivors overcome suffering, embrace their whole selves, and emerge as autonomous leaders. Dr. Melissa Barker, Ed.D.: Dr. Melissa Barker, EdD is an entrepreneur, activist, and emerging voice in the growing psychedelics movement. She is also the founder of The Phoenix Project, a community-led mental health tech platform created by trauma survivors for trauma survivors. Dr. Barker's personal journey healing from sexual violence led her to psychedelics, including ketamine, MDMA/MDA, psilocybin, and LSD. She's currently utilizing her experiences to build Phoenix, the first AI companion designed specifically for trauma recovery and psychedelic integration. Highlights: Dr. Barker's personal trauma history and its impact on her mental health. How psychedelics accelerated Dr. Barker's healing journey. Dr. Barker's transformative experiences with ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, and MDA. Integrating powerful psychedelic experiences into daily life. Addressing issues of psychedelic access, safety, and reciprocity. Exploring The Phoenix Project & the importance of community healing. Dr. Barker's seven stages of trauma recovery. How The Phoenix Project got its name, and what's to come in version 2.0. Kundalini yoga's role in Dr. Barker's and Joseph's healing journeys. Dr. Barker's message of hope to trauma survivors. How to connect with Dr. Barker. Key Links: The Phoenix Project: https://www.iamphoenixproject.com/     The Phoenix Project on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iam_phoenix_project/?hl=en    Dr. Barker on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmelissabarker/?hl=en Episode Sponsors: BiOptimizers - Get 10% off Magnesium Breakthrough Psyched Wellness - use code THIRDWAVE23 to get 15% off.